“Becoming part of this has been over 20 years in the making for me,” Burke said. These two functions help speed up reactions to make important molecules needed for life. RNA is like DNA in that it is a set of instructions and can store genetic information about basic building blocks for life, but it can also perform chemical reactions like enzymes. Scientists hypothesize that RNA, a nucleic acid, was at the heart of molecular processes when life started around 4 billion years ago. The award will fund their proposal to study RNA as a model for the origins of life. The Burke lab recently won a $5 million Interdisciplinary Consortium for Astrobiology Research (ICAR) award from NASA in partnership with eight other institutions. “Something that guides people in thinking about how life might come about on other worlds is trying to understand how life might have started here on this planet,” said Donald Burke-Agüero, principal investigator at Bond Life Sciences Center and professor of Molecular Microbiology & Immunology in the MU School of Medicine. The search for life on other planets may seem quite literally out of reach, but the search actually starts here, on Earth. $5 million grant awarded to study RNA’s place in start of life on Earth In his lab at Bond LSC, Donald Burke-Agüero examines his model of the RNA protein structure.
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