My research group is approaching the “origin of life” problem by geological and chemical methods.

Geological Approaches:

My research group is conducting international field surveys.  We are trying to find more evidence of the early life from very ancient rocks coming from Greenland, South Africa and Canada.  We also try to constrain the oceanic environments of the early Earth by analyzing ancient rocks.  Microbial researches on terrestrial and submarine hot springs are also subjects for my research group.

Chemical Approaches:

We have our own hypothesis that the dynamics of the early Earth produced the first life.  We consider two factors for “dynamic.” One is the meteorite impacts on the early oceans and the other is the plate tectonics. We performed experiments to simulate oceanic impact by meteorites.  We are successful to produce an amino acid and other organic molecules. We also performed experiments to simulate a part of plate tectonics and successful to produce several types of peptides, which are precursors for life’s protein. 

Combination and integration of those different approaches are uniquely realized in my lab to produce new concept for origin of life.