The Norcel Institute

08/06/2026

Yes - NoRCEL ERA coming up this Autumn - you can register now via: https://norcel.net/norcel-era/

18/05/2026

3 Minute Science - 1st round deadline - 31st May. Go on.... there's still time to showcase your science in our competition!
https://norcel.net/3-minute-science-competition/

15/05/2026

Yes ... It's coming on Saturday September 12th 2026!

Coming soon! Watch out for our launch of NoRCEL ERA

13/05/2026

Coming soon! Watch out for our launch of NoRCEL ERA

07/05/2026

One of our NoRCEL Institute members, Dr Bruce Damer has very kindly brought this new publication (https://lnkd.in/ebRCHTmz) to our attention - so all you astro-scientists out there, please do take a look!
"A cross section of the origins community has been collaborating for two years on a special collection for Astrobiology, themed "An Origin of Life on Land." We are happy to report that this work has successfully concluded with the latest issue (https://lnkd.in/ebRCHTmz) launched today.
Sage, the new owner of Astrobiology has issued this press release, co-authored with the BIOTA Institute." https://lnkd.in/e-E4Zaiw

We believe that this collection represents significant new studies and accumulating evidence supporting a scenario for life originating in subaerial, freshwater environments. This is an alternative scenario to the oceanic alkaline hydrothermal vent proposal. Of course, each setting has its benefits and its deficiencies, but we feel that these new studies fill some of the gaps in a 'terrestrial' origin of life scenario.
This issue comes on the heels of the recent sample returns from Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx which brought us all compelling reports of rich inventories of organics that would have been delivered to the early Earth, including all five canonical nucleobases. We feel that such organic sources would be made available in prebiotically important chemical pathways if they are deposited on land, and can accumulate and concentrate in small bodies of water subject to cycling, a 21st Century version of Darwin's 'warm little ponds'. The other significant proposal we and our coauthors are putting forward is that multiple different localities (hot springs and soda lakes for example) with varying chemical and physical properties might be implicated in abiogenesis, especially as prebiotic materials such as protocells can be naturally transported between them. Differing resources and selection criteria would be available. In this new view, perhaps an entire landscape might be implicated in life's beginning. An issue article which excited us as experimentalists is work from the University of New South Wales in which 3D printed interconnected vessels were used to test interchanges and chemical processing between varying pools. This is a step toward multi-stage, multi-locality systems chemistry approaches, which brings some of the complexity of fieldwork at analog sites into the laboratory.

21/04/2026

Our CEO, Alejandro Barbero Heredia's student, Eduardo Fonseca-González
just had his paper published in Springer's Journal of Molecular Evolution
-so, well done to them. Take a look: Experimental and Computational Simulation of the Prebiotic Peptide Bond Formation Driven by Wet-Dry Cycles and Gamma Ionizing Radiation: An Insight into Molecular Evolution | Journal of Molecular Evolution | Springer Nature Link

18/04/2026

Have they got something here?

Scientists may have solved a long-standing puzzle over why conditions on Earth have remained stable enough for life to evolve over billions of years.

The 'Gaia' hypothesis proposed that living things interacting with inorganic processes somehow keep the planet in a state where life can persist -- despite threats such as a brightening sun, volcanoes and meteorite strikes.

The puzzle of how this might work has divided experts for decades, but a team led by scientists from the University of Exeter have proposed a solution.

They say stability could come from "sequential selection" in which situations where life destabilises the environment tend to be short-lived and result in further change until a stable situation emerges, which then tends to persist.

Once this happens, the system has more time to acquire further traits that help to stabilise and maintain it -- a process known as "selection by survival alone."

"We can now explain how the Earth has accumulated stabilising mechanisms over the past 3.5 billion years of life on the planet," said Professor Tim Lenton, of the University of Exeter.

"The central problem with the original Gaia hypothesis was that evolution via natural selection cannot explain how the whole planet came to have stabilising properties over geologic timescales."

"Instead, we show that at least two simpler mechanisms work together to give our planet with life self-stabilising properties."

He added: "Our findings can help explain how we came to be here to wonder about this question in the first place."

Professor Dave Wilkinson, of the University of Lincoln, who was also involved in the research, added: "I have been involved in trying to figure out how Gaia might work for over 20 years -- finally it looks like a series of promising ideas are all coming together to provide the understanding I have been searching for."

Dr James D**e, of the University of Southampton, also an author on the paper, said: "As well as being important for helping to estimate the probability of complex life elsewhere in the universe, the mechanisms we identify may prove crucial in understanding how our home planet may respond to drivers such as human-produced climate change and extinction events."

Creating transformative solutions to the global changes that humans are now causing is a key focus of the University of Exeter's new Global Systems Institute, directed by Professor Lenton, who said: "We can learn some lessons from Gaia on how to create a flourishing, sustainable, stable future for 9-11 billion people this century."

The Gaia hypothesis, first put forward by James Lovelock in the 1970s, was named after the deity who personified the Earth in Greek mythology.

For more please see:https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/07/180702111234.htm

08/04/2026

Just a reminder about our competition - you've got just over 3 weeks to enter the first round! Go for it...

04/04/2026

1m •

Hot off the press! Check this latest inititiative out at https://lnkd.in/e6jeaRVN

07/03/2026

We're on at BEP2026 - her's a snapshot of some of our participants enjoying this event. Sorry, if you weren't able to make it...