News – 2018

Members of the Institute of Molecular Evolution and pupils from Düsseldorf are on Elba to analyze the effects of plastic contamination on the marine environment. The project is supported by the HHU initiative "Bürgeruniversität in der Lehre" and documentated in a blog.

Serpentinization: Connecting geochemistry, ancient metabolism and industrial hydrogenation

Life 8: 41 (2018)

doi: 10.3390/life8040041

The last universal common ancestor between ancient Earth chemistry and the onset of genetics

PLoS Genet 14: e1007518 (2018)

doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1007518

William Martin took part in the Roundtable Discussion "The Archaea-Eukaryote evolutionary pathway – Is the roadmap clear?" at the 17th International Symposium on Microbial Ecology in Leipzig, Germany.

The Roundtable Discussion was organized by Chuanlun Zhang (Southern University of Science and Technology, China), Ruixin Zhu (Tongji University, China) and Li Huang (Chinese Academy of Sciences, China).

An algal greening of land

Cell 174:256–258 (2018)

doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2018.06.034

The Chara genome: Secondary complexity and implications for plant terrestrialization

Cell 174:448–464 (2018)

doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2018.06.033

Press release by HHU (in German)

Il Bo Live from the Univeristy of Padova (Italy) interviewed Bill Martin about the first organism on Earth:

Com'era fatto il primo organismo mai vissuto sulla Terra?

(Text in Italian, Video in English)

The Archbishop of Berlin, Dr. Heiner Koch, held the laudatio to the laureate, Prof. William Martin, at the award ceremony of the Klüh Prize in the Hotel Adlon (Berlin). Dr. Koch's laudatio and Prof. Martin's acceptance speech are available on the website of the Archdiocese of Berlin (in German).

Rheinische Post, a major German regional daily newspaper, published an article about William Martin and the Klüh Prize 2018 awarded to him.

Westdeutsche Zeitung, one of the largest German regional daily newspaper in North Rhine-Westphalia, published an article about William Martin and the Klüh Prize 2018 awarded to him.

William Martin recieves the 2018 Award of the Klüh Foundation for the Promotion of Innovation in Science and Research

Embryophyte stress signaling evolved in the algal progenitors of land plants

Proc Natl Acad Sci USA (2018)

doi: 10.1073/pnas.1719230115

Cessa Rauch successfully finished her doctorate with the thesis entitled

"Plastid longevity in sacoglossan sea slugs".

Eukaryote lateral gene transfer is Lamarckian

Nat Ecol Evol (2018)

doi: 10.1038/s41559-018-0521-7

Native metals, electron bifurcation, and CO₂ reduction in early biochemical evolution

Curr Opin Microbiol 43: 77–83 (2018)

doi: 10.1016/j.mib.2017.12.010