James Attwater

Lecturer in Organic Chemistry and Chemical Biology (proleptic). Royal Society University Research Fellow.

I am interested in the nature of minimal biological systems, both synthetic and primordial. I completed my PhD studies in Philipp Holliger’s lab at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, where I developed and characterised new catalytic RNAs using molecular evolution. I continued my postdoctoral work at the LMB as a Junior Research Fellow of Homerton College Cambridge, then as Investigator Scientist, exploring biological behaviours in these molecular systems. I took up a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 2021 to begin my independent research into the synthetic capabilities of RNA in a prebiotic chemical context.

Qian Zhang

Postdoctoral Research Fellow in RNA catalysis

I joined James’s lab in late 2023 to investigate the abundance of miniature RNA motifs and their capacity to drive biological and prebiotic chemical transformations. I am currently completing my DPhil studies in Andrew Turberfield’s lab at the University of Oxford. My doctoral work focuses on oligonucleotide-based molecular machines as part of the Marie Curie network ArtMoMa. During my DPhil studies, I visited Philipp Holliger’s lab at the MRC Laboratory of molecular biology, where I learned more about in vitro selection and got interested in the origins of life.

Luis Ohlendorf

2nd year PhD student

For my BSc and MPhil, I worked on SARS-CoV-2 evolution and vaccine development (Regensburg University and University of Cambridge). I am interested in the interactions between different RNA species in a hypothetical RNA world, the catalytic capabilities of RNA, and general questions about the origin of life and evolution.