The Astonishing Story of the First Complex Cells
Speaker: Prof. Mukund Thattai, Simons Centre for the Study of Living Machines, National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bengaluru
 
Chair : Professor Sanjay Jain, Department of Physics, Delhi University
 
For a billion years, bacteria dominated the earth. Then, about 2.5 billion years ago, a more complex form of life emerged known as the eukaryotes. These cells were shape shifters and master hunters, they invented sex and learned to live in communities. Plants and animals, including humans, trace our origins back to these enigmatic organisms. Remarkably, we can peer back billions of years to discover how this great leap in cell complexity happened. It is a detective story: the clues are hidden in our genomes, and the plot has more twists than even Darwin could have imagined