For Nobel laureate Jack Szostak, the biggest question in science today is fundamental: What is the origin of life?
Szostak, a professor of genetics at Harvard University, has dedicated his lab to piecing together the complex puzzle of life’s origins on Earth.
The story takes us back billions of years and may provide answers to some of our most mysterious questions: Where did we come from—and are we alone in the universe?
“We all want to know one way or another how we came to be here,” says Szostak.
“If you just look around at life and the world, it’s so amazing and varied and beautiful and it’s so different from everything that’s inanimate. It just raises the question of: How did this difference arise and how did it lead to us?”