​​SLAC Lecture | Primordial Pathway: A Legacy of Ancient Life on Earth

It is a mystery how the earliest organisms on earth evolved the means to thrive, grow and reproduce under the sparse conditions of the young planet. Primordial earth had little oxygen and in the deep seas, no available light. One theory proposes that life evolved near undersea vents, taking energy from gasses bubbling up from earth's interior. There is a known metabolic pathway – called the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway – that works in an oxygen-poor environment to transform hydrogen gas and carbon dioxide to usable energy and cellular building blocks. Genetic evidence suggests that this pathway originated in Earth’s earliest eras. Today, billions of years later, this pathway is still used by bacteria and archaea across environments and ecosystems, including in our own digestive tracts. Its biochemistry is complex and bizarre, but over the past hundred years, its mechanisms have been clarified piece by piece, each step making use of new technologies. Today, we are learning more about the Wood-Ljungdahl reactions using X-rays from synchrotrons such as those generated by the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource at SLAC. This lecture will describe the development of our knowledge of this ancient pathway and the way that modern tools illuminate this chemical messenger from the dawn of life.

Join us at the Kavli Building or online. Registration is required if you plan to attend in person.

Site entry will be allowed starting at 6:30 p.m. Proceed directly to the Kavli Building to check in.

We will also be streaming the lecture live on our YouTube page. You do not need to register if you plan to watch online.

Click here for more information about the SLAC Public Lectures.

About the Speaker:

Macon Abernathy grew up near Seattle in Washington state. He completed a bachelor’s degree in environmental science at Western Washington University (WWU), a small state school in northern Washington, just a stone’s throw from Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada. At WWU he first experienced research as an undergraduate, examining the effects of silver nanoparticles on algal growth. From there, he moved on to graduate work at the University of California, Riverside, where he pivoted from researching freshwater systems to sedimentary systems and examined how toxic metals react with common mineral phases. This work introduced him to X-ray science at SLAC, where he often visited the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) to use the lab’s X-rays to interrogate his samples. He found the work at SSRL exhilarating and was thrilled to receive an offer to continue conducting research at the facility within the Structural and Molecular Biology group. Macon is now a research associate in Dr. Ritimukta Sarangi’s group at SLAC, where he uses X-rays to study the organometallic chemistry of metabolic proteins.

Attend In Person:

The public lecture will be held in person at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, in the Kavli Auditorium in the Kavli Building (B51). Parking is free and can be found in front of the Science and User Support Building (B53). Doors open and site entry will be allowed starting at 6:30 p.m. Proceed directly to the Kavli Building to check in.

Registered guests should arrive before 6:50 pm to secure a seat in the auditorium. After 6:50 pm, waitlist and walk-up guests will be admitted if space is available due to registered guest no-shows. The lecture will start promptly at 7 p.m. and conclude at 8 p.m. There will be opportunities to chat with the scientists following the event. Registration is required if you plan to attend the lecture in person. The deadline to register is Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2024.

In order for SLAC to provide a safe environment for the public and our employees, and expedite access to the event, no handbags or backpacks larger than 12"x6"x12" will be allowed inside the venue. Exceptions to this policy will be made for all medically necessary items after proper inspection and for SLAC-badged staff.

To join the public lecture in person, you are required to follow all protocols and instructions from SLAC staff.

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