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The Origin and Early Evolution of Life on Earth: A Laboratory in the School of Science

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Astrobiology and Cuatro Ciénegas Basin as an Analog of Early Earth

Part of the book series: Cuatro Ciénegas Basin: An Endangered Hyperdiverse Oasis ((CUCIBA))

Abstract

The study and research in the origin of life in Mexico have deep roots in the last century. However, the modern period of study of the origin and early evolution of life started in the early 1970s, when two groups were created to study the topic at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). The first of these groups began in 1974 in the School of Sciences and has continued to work since then: analyzing comets and meteors as models of chemical events that occurred in the early Earth; studying the central hypothesis of the “RNA world” and the role of modified ribonucleotides on the early stages of evolution; using bioinformatics tools and comparative genomics; and trying to infer very early stages of life. Here, we present a brief description of the main lines of research of the first group and the perspectives of the study of the origin and early evolution of life. This chapter addresses a question that does not have a model site, since the environmental conditions where it arose are still unknown. Nevertheless, many inferences can be made out of experiments and comparative genomics.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank all the members of the Origen de la Vida Laboratory at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. We also acknowledge the help of Dr. Ricardo Hernández-Morales and Dr. Alberto Vázquez-Salazar.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM, Mexico City, Mexico

    José Alberto Campillo-Balderas & Arturo Becerra

Authors
  1. José Alberto Campillo-Balderas
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  2. Arturo Becerra
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Arturo Becerra .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Ecología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM, Mexico City, Mexico

    Valeria Souza

  2. Instituto de Ciencias Nucleares, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico

    Antígona Segura

  3. Space Life Sciences Lab, University of Florida, Merritt Island, FL, USA

    Jamie S. Foster

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Campillo-Balderas, J.A., Becerra, A. (2020). The Origin and Early Evolution of Life on Earth: A Laboratory in the School of Science. In: Souza, V., Segura, A., Foster, J. (eds) Astrobiology and Cuatro Ciénegas Basin as an Analog of Early Earth. Cuatro Ciénegas Basin: An Endangered Hyperdiverse Oasis. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46087-7_10

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