Congratulations to Sam Verbanic on an exceptionally smooth thesis defense! Four and a half years of hard work and enthusiasm establishing a completely new project in the lab could be seen. Dr. Verbanic will be staying with us as a postdoctoral fellow to expand his...
It is tempting to imagine that, during the origin of life, the earliest catalytic RNAs would be so simple that they would be rather non-specific in activity or substrates. Then, evolution might create variants that would become optimized for different activities...