December 25, 2024 

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from the DasGupta Lab.

December 13, 2024 

Another feather for our postdoc extraordinaire, Dr. Annyesha Biswas! Annyesha was selected to present her research on discovering new ligase ribozymes at the College of Science and Engineering Research Horizons Symposium at Notre Dame. She gave a fantastic talk and won the best poster award to boot!

December 6-7, 2024 

Saurja attended the second 'Organs and Origins' Conference titled: "In the Beginning: Life, the Universe, and Everything"

Saurja was awarded a faculty fellowship funded by the John Templeton Foundation.

Read more about the conference here. 

November 19, 2024 

Saurja was an invited speaker at the Michiana Science Cafe (at Chicory Cafe in Downtown South Bend) organized by the Science Policy Initiative. Saurja spoke about how scientists are trying to solve the mysteries of the origin of life and how humans have grappled with this question since the very beginning. 

November 28, 2024 

A very happy Thanksgiving from the DasGupta Lab! Thanks to Taylor for the artwork

October 31, 2024 

The lab celebrates our first Lab-o-Ween! Thanks to our resident artist Taylor for starting this wonderful artistic tradition. 

October 28, 2024 

We welcome Casey Hoffman as an undergraduate researcher in the lab. Casey will join Jackson on the characterization of newly-discovered ligase ribozymes. 

October 26, 2024 

Saurja and Annyesha represented the DasGupta lab at the Midwest Enzyme Chemistry Conference (MECC).

Saurja presented a talk and Annyesha presented a poster.

October 28, 2024 

Fisrt year graduate student Brandon Matos (Organic) starts his rotation in the lab. All the best, Brandon!

October 24, 2024 

Saurja was a guest speaker at Notre Dame's Biophysics Graduate Retreat. He shared the lab's research on recreating RNA-based biochemistry and recent discoveries of novel ligase ribozyme reactivities.

October 11, 2024 

Taylor passed her Oral Candidacy Exam. 

She has swiftly entered her 'Ph.D. Candidate' Era.  

Onwards and Upwards!

October 5, 2024 

Saurja was a panelist in a Science Writing Panel at STEMPeers-Chicago. Saurja represented Club SciWri, a popular science publication. Please reach out to Saurja if you want to know more about the DasGupta Lab's science communication initiatives.

September 25, 2024 

Taylor was a guest speaker at her alma mater - Davenport University, where she shared her love for scientific research and the various academic opportunities available after graduating from college with the students of the Biological Laboratory Science (BLS) program.  

Keep inspiring the next generation, Taylor! Read the full story here.

September 19, 2024 

Congrats to Annyesha on winning Third Place at Notre Dame's Post Doc Lightning Talk Competition! 

Her presentation was entitled: 'Get the Lead Out – Seeing Lead with RNA Sensors'.  Thanks to Annyesha for getting the lab our very first award.

September 14, 2024 

Our lab's research on the Origins of Life was spotlighted in 'Scientia' - Notre Dame's Undergraduate Journal of Scientific Research. Read the story on Page 19 of the Spring edition of Scientia here.

September 13, 2024 

New paper! This paper demonstrates that an RNA enzyme that catalyzes RNA ligation with prebiotically relevant RNA substrates can evolve an entirely new structure to catalyze RNA ligation with RNA substrates activated with the biological triphosphate group. This transition foreshadows the emergence of protein-based enzymes that make RNA using triphosphate building blocks (NTPs). Read the paper here. 

September 12, 2024 

The lab got its first award! With support from the Notre Dame Global Asia Artist Partnership Program, we will work with graphic artist Arghya Manna (IIT Gandhinagar, India) to create a first-of-it's kind comic book on the Origins of Life. 

September 2, 2024 

The lab welcomes first-year graduate students Naomi Ross (Biophysics) and Natalie Kotlin (Organic Chemistry) as the first rotation students of this academic year. We also welcome Biochemistry major, Jackson Schelzig as an undergraduate researcher in the lab. Jackson will work on the characterization of newly-discovered ligase ribozymes. 

All the best!

August 26, 2024 

The lab's first review article is published in WIREs RNA!

"Synthetic antibodies for accelerated RNA crystallography." See here.

July 9, 2024 

We had our first group meeting, where postdoc Annyesha presented her PhD research and recent results in our lab. 

We hope this is the start of something great!

June 10-14, 2024 

Taylor attended AbGradCon (the largest Astrobiology conference for students) at Cornell. She presented a poster on her work on the importance of bifunctional RNA enzymes on primordial enzyme evolution.

The first of many for Taylor!

June 7, 2024 

We had our Lab Warming party. 

Great job, Taylor, for putting everything together!

June, 2024 

High schoolers Areej Arif, Ishita Aswasthi, and Jenny Yang join the lab for a month-long summer internship. They will be developing heavy-metal sensors using RNA aptamers

May 13-14, 2024 

Saurja was an invited speaker at the University of Notre Dame Annual Biochemistry/IBMS retreat. 

His talk was entitled "How to create life...from scratch"

April 26, 2024 

The lab welcomes undergraduate students Matthew Politte (Organic Chemistry major) and Andrew Baranko (Biochemistry major). 

Matt and Drew will develop RNA aptamer-based biosensors.

April 5-6, 2024 

Taylor and Saurja attended the inaugural 'Organs and Origins' Conference titled: "What is an Organ?"  

Taylor and Saurja were awarded fellowships funded by the John Templeton Foundation.

Read more about the conference here. 

March 19, 2024 

Our collaborative paper was published in PNAS Nexus. 

In this paper, we explored environments that would have been conducive to the emergence of cellular life on the Earth. We showed that natural soda lake water could provide a suitable environment for three processes likely important for the origin of cellular life: nonenzymatic RNA polymerization, ribozyme activity, and encapsulation by prebiotic membranes. Read the paper here. 

March 18, 2024 

Taylor Opolka joins the lab as its first graduate student. 

Taylor joined us from Davenport University, where she was a star basketball player. 

She will investigate the molecular principles underlying RNA evolution. Welcome to the RNA World, Taylor!

December 8, 2023 

Saurja was an invited speaker at the Molecular Biophysics Unit (MBU) at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). He spoke about his efforts to create RNA-based life in the lab.

December 2, 2023 

The DasGupta Laboratory Charter is ready. 

Take a look here.

November 3, 2023 

Saurja is profiled by Notre Dame Science. 

Read the interview here.

September 14, 2023 

Saurja spoke at the 1st NYC RNA Symposium at The Rockefeller University. 

The title of his talk was: "Primordial RNA assembly: Chemistry, Catalysis, and Compartmentalization."

August 3, 2023 

New paper out in ACS Central Science ! 

Read the paper here. 

We establish molecular crowding as a general mechanism to allow RNA enzymes to function at low concentrations of Mg ions.

Read a companion review on 'molecular crowding and RNA catalysis' here.

August 2, 2023 

Saurja spoke at Origins 2023. 

The title of his talk was: "Primordial RNA assembly: Chemistry, Catalysis, and Compartmentalization."

June 30, 2023 

New paper out in Chemistry - A European Journal ! 

Read the paper here. 

We establish the first instance of RNA-catalyzed RNA assembly within prebiotically relevant fatty acid protocells.

June 29, 2023 

Zoe Weiss, Saurja's undergraduate mentee at Harvard, shares her research experience in Science. It is one of the top personal essays published in Science this year. See here. Read her story here. Read Harvard's profile of Zoe here. Read Zoe and Saurja's paper here. 

Zoe is currently a post-baccalaureate researcher in Dr. Francis Collins' lab at NIH.