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In 2016, a Spanish biochemist named Ãscar Fernández Capetillo attended a conference about the origins of life on Earth. The speaker was Jack W. Szostak, a winner of the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, who was attempting to discover the recipe for generating life in the laboratory, from a basis of chemical ingredients already present on the planet during the Earthâs infancy. After his talk, both men got together for coffee. Szostak does not remember the content of their conversation but for Fernández Capetillo it is imprinted on his memory. Five years later, that brief chat has culminated in the discovery of a mechanism that sheds light on one of the most devastating diseases known to humans: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrigâs disease).