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Published online 20 May 2009 |
Nature
459,
316-319
(2009)
| doi:10.1038/459316a
Corrected online: 17 June 2009
News Feature
Origin of life: Nascence man
Like an alchemist of yore, Mike Russell is taking basic elements and trying to transform them — not into gold, but into the stirrings of life, John Whitfield reports.
You could call the two linked aluminium containers in Mike Russell's lab the biological equivalent of a particle accelerator. But rather than simulating the birth of the Universe, he hopes that this apparatus will recreate the first moments of life on Earth, and give experimental support to his ideas about how geology begat biology.
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