Research in our group is focused on the use of synthetic organic chemistry and methodology to

• experimentally address questions concerning the origins of life with respect to the advent of functional monomers and the emergence of informational polymers.
• fashion artificial informational polymers in order to expand the interface between synthetic nucleic acids and the natural biopolymers (proteins and RNA/DNA).
• investigate protometabolic chemical reactions and networks that have potential to evolve towards self-sustaining reaction cycles.
• synthesize (prebiotically inspired) vesicles and study their transition to functional protocells capable of harboring reaction networks.
• make available novel molecular tools that may provide new avenues for probing biological systems and for research in synthetic biology.
• make available diverse novel molecules and intermediates that would be useful in chemical therapeutics.