Monday 15th of June
12:30 – 13:30 Registration
13:30 – 14:00 Opening: David Liberles (Temple University, US) and Klára Hlouchová (Charles University, CZ)
14:00 – 15:50 Proto-metabolism & abiogenesis session
14:00 – Natalia Mrnjavac (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, DE) The assembly of microbial metabolism at the dawn of life
14:20 – Manavika Khanna (Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, DE)
Possible roles of coenzyme A and its precursors in carbon protometabolism
14:40 – Juan Rivas-Santisteban (Department of Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology, National Museum of Natural Sciences, CSIC, Madrid, ES)
On the feasibility of a nonadaptive-nonsequential abiogenesis. An alternative to the Oparin-Haldane model
15:00 – Krzysztof Dołowy (Warsaw University of Life Sciences, PL).
Where prebiotic evolution started: in water, outer space or in deep hot geosphere?
15:20 – 15:50 Discussion
15:50 – 16:30 Coffee break
16:30 – 18:00 Peptide and Protein evolution session
16:30 – Saroj Rout (ETH Zurich, CH)
An Amyloid-Centric View of the Prebiotic Origin of Molecular Complexity
16:50 – Matúš Friček (Charles University, CZ)
Prebiotically Plausible Peptides can Self-assemble into β-rich Structural Hubs
17:10 – David Schnettler (ETH Zurich, CH)
From peptides to polymerases: exploring minimal proteins for prebiotic polynucleotide replication
17.30 – 18:00 Discussion
Tuesday 16th of June
9:30 – 12:30 Peptide and Protein evolution session
9:30 – Burckhard Seelig (University of Minnesota, US)
Early functional proteins made with minimal parts
9:50 – Claudia Alvarez Carreno (University College London, UK)
Charting the evolutionary relationships among ancient protein folds
10:10 – Valerio Guido Giacobelli (Charles University, CZ)
Ancient amino acid sets enable stable protein folds
10:30 – 11:30 Coffee break
11:30 – Erich Bornberg-Bauer (University of Münster, DE)
How does complexity of proteins and protein complexes arise?
11:50 – Michel Mickael (Inst. of Genetics and Animal Biotechnology, PL)
The Role of Opsins in the Origin of GPCRs and Life
12:10 – 12:30 Discussion
12:30 – 13:30 Lunch
13:30 – 16:30 Nucleic acid evolution session
13:30 – Judit Sponer (Institute of Biophysics, Czech Academy of Sciences, Brno, CZ)
Enhanced RNA Formation Under Amine-Rich Local Atmospheres from 2’,3’–Cyclic Nucleotides
13:50 – Thomas Matreux (LBE (ESPCI Paris, FR)
Early Earth conditions as a selector for functional RNAs
14:10 – Dieter Braun, Alexander Floroni, Felix Dänekamp (LMU Munich, DE)
From RNA to the first cells in the nonequilibria of porous rock
14:30 – 15:30 Coffee break
15:30 – Tommaso Fraccia (University of Milan, IT)
High-Yield Prebiotic Polymerization of 2′,3′-Cyclic Nucleotides under Wet‑Dry Cycling
15:50 – Vedrana Bazovic (Earth-Life Science Institute, Institute of Science Tokyo, JP)
A short self-acylating ribozyme shows selective amino acid reactivity
16:10 – 16:30 Discussion
17:00 – 20:00 Poster session
Wednesday 17th of June
9:30 – 13:00 Translational system evolution
9:30 – Kosuke Fujishima (Earth-Life Science Institute, Institute of Science Tokyo, JP)
Reconstructing minimal functional components of transcription and translation
9:50 – Disha Gajanan Hiregange (Department of Chemical and Structural Biology, Weizmann Institute of Science, IL)
The Origin of Life: Structural and functional insights of the Protoribosome
10:10 – Simone Codispoti (University of Milan, IT)
RNA–Peptide World: prebiotic peptides & libraries driving ancestral ribosome coacervation
10:30 – 11:30 Coffee break
11:30 – Andres Jäschke (Heidelberg University, DE)
Testing Hopfield’s Hypothesis: evidence on a stereochemical origin of the genetic code
11:50 – Anton Petrov (Georgia Institute of Technology, US)
Found in Translation: Coevolution of the Ribosome and RNAse P and their divergences from LUCA
12:10 – Michal Kolar (UCT Prague, CZ)
Computer simulations of prebiotic predecessors of the ribosome
12:30 – Julia Sunnarborg, Stephen Freeland (University of Maryland, Baltimore County Department of Biological Sciences, US)
Reimagining the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology
12:30 – 13:00 Discussion
13:00 – 14:00 Lunch
14:00 – 16:00 Free time for interactions
