The advance of modern science is providing tools that may be used to search for plausible answers based on solid sciences instead of pure speculations. Since the discovery of catalytic RNA by Cech and Altman in the early 1980's, a popular view that RNA proceeded our contemporary world is gaining support from different fields of science. This hypothesized period in the course of life evolution is termed an RNA World by Gilbert. Much of our lab's effort is directed towards understanding RNA's structure and function and evaluating the plausibility of an RNA world before our modern world. In addition, we also consider other possible primordial living systems in which polyphosphates and thioesters might be the essential molecules.
Examples are aptamers, biosensors, and enzymes.
We are relatively new in this area. However, there is a lot of excitement coming out of the field, and we predict that new diagnostic probes and drugs may evolutionize our current healthy care system and improve the quality of people's life. Our lab is well equipped for our broad research effort. Major instruments within the lab include a Shimadzu 4-solvent system HPLC with a photodiode array detector, a BioRad phosphorimager system, a thermocycler, and an array of centrifuges and gel electrophoresis apparatuses.