NBIA Colloquium: Dante Lauretta

Title: Quantum Astrobiology: From Asteroid Organics to the Quantum Architecture of Life

Abstract: Astrobiology asks how the universe produces living worlds. Quantum astrobiology asks whether quantum phenomena are merely the background rules of chemistry, or whether they play an active role in the emergence, organization, and evolution of life. In this colloquium, I will begin with NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission and the returned samples from asteroid Bennu, which preserve a rich inventory of prebiotic organic compounds formed before the origin of life on Earth. I will then explore how certain molecular architectures, especially aromatic systems such as nucleobases, indoles, and tryptophan-rich protein networks, may support quantum-relevant processes including excitonic coupling, spin-dependent interactions, coherent energy transport, and collective optical behavior.

The talk will connect these ideas to an emerging experimental program using unicellular organisms, currently focused on Paramecium, to test whether conserved cytoskeletal aromatic networks contribute measurably to cellular behavior, learning-like responses, and information processing. The broader goal is to frame life not only as chemistry that became complex, but as organized matter that learned to sense, store, transmit, and act on information. I will close by considering how this perspective may reshape our understanding of the origin of life, biosignatures, and the relationship between physics and biology.

Brief bio-sketch:
Dante S. Lauretta is a Regents Professor of Planetary Science and Cosmochemistry at the University of Arizona. He is also a Visiting Professor in the Globe Institute at the University of Copenhagen. He serves as Principal Investigator of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, which returned pristine samples from the carbon-rich asteroid Bennu to Earth in 2023. His research focuses on the chemistry of the early Solar System, the formation and evolution of organic compounds in planetary materials, and the origin of life. He is the Director the Arizona Astrobiology Center, an interdisciplinary effort to connect cosmochemistry, planetary science, origins-of-life research, with emerging ideas in quantum biology.