Chemistry Studentship: Chemical origins of biological catalysis on early Earth

This is an EPSRC Doctoral Landscape Award studentship exploring the prebiotic synthesis and catalytic functions of biomolecules on early Earth. The chemical origin of life is one of the greatest unanswered questions in the natural sciences: how did life start on early Earth several billions of years ago? Building on recent work that prebiotic reaction pathways efficiently produce a range RNA, peptide, and coenzyme precursors under simulated early Earth conditions, this project aims to investigate the conventional and prebiotic chemical synthesis of biological molecules with potential catalytic functions. The goals are to develop robust and scalable chemical syntheses that are amenable to rapidly generating catalyst libraries, which will be used to investigate their organocatalytic properties in challenging prebiotic chemical reactions. This is an exciting opportunity to tackle the origin of life question using synthetic organic chemistry and analytical chemistry. Students will join Dr Saidul Islam's newly established group with a fully equipped laboratory with access to a suite of latest equipment at the Department of Chemistry at King's College London.