Research Project R. Riek

Amyloids, RNA, and clay minerals all exhibit highly repetitive architectures at the nanometer scale, enabling multivalent (avidity-driven) interactions that are stronger and more selective than individual molecular contacts. Such interactions can promote molecular recognition, local concentration, and cooperative assembly, potentially facilitating the emergence of increasingly complex molecular systems. In this project, we investigate how these repetitive organic and mineral frameworks influence peptide replication, RNA polymerization, and molecular stability under prebiotically relevant conditions, including simulated early-Earth solar irradiation. By exploring these processes, we aim to uncover plausible pathways by which simple chemical building blocks could have self-organized into functional peptide–RNA networks and to assess whether such systems may have left detectable signatures in the geological record.