MERCED, CA— The Office of Research, the
Division of Graduate Studies and the Core One course at the
University of California, Merced, will sponsor a Feb. 15 lecture
about the origins of life in celebration of the 199th birthday of
Charles Darwin.
Antonio Lazcano of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de
México will visit the campus to deliver the lecture, “The
Origins of Life on Earth: An Evolutionary Perspective,” that day at
3 p.m. Audience members may be seated in either room 102 or room
105 of the Classroom Building at UC Merced.
Lazcano’s lecture will hark to the earliest days of life —
when atmospheric, oceanic and astronomically-based factors may have
come together to create what is commonly called the “primordial
soup” or “prebiotic broth.” Lazcano’s talk will explain how this
may have created an “RNA world” that contained the seeds of life
— or maybe not. He will suggest that RNA may not have been a
direct outcome of prebiotic evolution, but rather the evolutionary
outcome of even older, more primitive living systems.
The public is welcome, and there is no cost to attend the
lecture. UC Merced is located at 5200 N. Lake Road in Merced.
Guests should park in the Lake Lot near the campus entrance.
Parking is $1/hour (visit
taps.ucmerced.edu/for more
information about parking and transportation on campus).
Antonio Lazcano is head of the Microbiology Laboratory at the
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. He has received
several major awards for his contributions to science, scientific
journalism, and teaching. He is the author of several books in
Spanish, including “The Miraculous Bacteria,” a collection of
scientific essays, “The Spark of Life,” a layperson-level
exploration of the heterotrophic theory of the emergence of life,
and “The Origin of Life,” which has become a best-seller with more
than 600,000 copies sold.
Darwin Day is an international celebration of science and
humanity held on or around Feb. 12, the day that Charles Darwin was
born on in 1809. For more information, see
www.darwinday.org.
For more information about the Feb. 15 Darwin Day lecture,
please contact Professor Monica Medina at (209) 228-7863 or
mmedina@ucmerced.edu, or
Professor Wil van Breugel at (209) 658-6392 or
wvanbreugel@ucmerced.edu.
