Learning about Life through Biophysics with Povilas Simonis

Povilas Simonis is a Lithuanian researcher with extensive experience in biophysics, the design of experimental procedures, analytical techniques, and the interpretation of data. He has experience working on multidisciplinary projects and with international collaborators, as well as conducting experiments.

Povilas participated in the BAFF Research scholar program in 2023, doing research titled Polymerization of Nucleic Acids and Emerge of Protocells under Prebiotic Conditions. He is currently a scientist at the Center of Physical Sciences and Technology in Lithuania and was the guest of the Beyond BAFF podcast.

Get a glimpse into our conversation with Povilas in this article and find out more about his search for the essence of life and experience in the U.S. by listening to the full podcast episode.

If you had to explain your field to people who are not familiar with it at all, what would you say?

At the time when I finished my PhD in chemistry, my focus was different. I was treating yeast cells with electric fields to improve pasteurization technologies, and freezing technologies to save energy and make the whole food sector more sustainable.

Now, I’m interested in very fundamental matters. I'm trying to understand the very basics. For example, I’m trying to understand how molecules, which we consider very chemical and definitely not alive, can start to assemble and form a necklace or a chain of molecules, and in that sense, become more complex and maybe even get some functions, which we relate to living things.

And when did you decide to make the switch?

It was some 10 years ago. I read the book by Richard Dawkins about a selfish gene called replicator. It's like a self-replicating molecule, and at the time, to me, it sounded like something from science fiction, but it really made sense.  When you think about it, something had to be able to copy itself and have the ability with each generation to become more complex.

So I kept that idea to myself for many years and after finishing my PhD, I got to know about BAFF. That program allowed me to try to pursue this old dream and find a professor in the United States who actually worked on that very topic.

Could you talk a bit more about the research you did in the U.S.?

We were investigating how molecules can become more complex in natural environments. There are many different hypotheses about where life began.

So we were really trying to find conditions under which bits of pieces can assemble. The environment we focused on was hot springs (small pools of water in hot volcanic fields) that undergo cycling, dehydration, and rehydration. Because when you dry something out, all the molecules that were in the solution start to concentrate. And by concentrating, they have a higher chance of bumping into one another and joining together.

So I was doing simulations of such an environment using, in my case, nucleotides, which are the building blocks of our DNA and RNA. Every living being on the planet has these molecules. And I investigate where nucleotides form chains and how long those chains are.

Are you continuing with the same research here?

Yes, I won the grant for my next postdoc project here in Lithuania. We’ll continue the research in a similar direction but with a new twist. We’ll be investigating whether a complementary chain can form. Like imagine, let's say, we have a solution or spaghetti that forms different letters.

And we put, throw those letters into a bowl and dry it out and rehydrate. We can assume that some words will form out of spaghetti. So this was what I was doing in the United States. The second task is to make that one sentence affect the second sentence. So those two sentences can interact.

If you look back to your time in the U.S. with BAFF, what would be your biggest takeaways and things that you gained from this experience?

Lots and lots of takeaways. I was very lucky to be able to work with Professor David Eamer. I felt like I was working with Charles Darwin or another big figure, a scientist who really loves research. Every discussion we had was exciting and inspiring. I also learned a lot from American culture. It was different and I learned that it’s very valuable to be open, that you talk with people you don't know.

What I also learned is that traveling in general is very impactful and that nature can be on a very different scale. You can watch the photos and videos, but that doesn't translate to your experience when you stand in front of, let's say, the giant sequoia or on top of a big mountain. That’s a very big takeaway and I'm looking forward to traveling more.

I also realized that Europe is quite small, so I will be traveling way more here, too. Nothing is too far in Europe. Like you can drive in a car, and in a couple of days, you can reach any point in Europe. So it's such a good mindset shift that everything seems closer now.

If you talk about the future of your field, what do you see, what are the most important developments in your field today?

One very important direction is to get more samples from the outer space. By investigating what compounds are available in the universe, we can find out what can be delivered to Earth. So we learn what Lego pieces we can play with.

Another important direction is to get more funding for bigger-scale experiments. I learned that in the United States, even PhDs, are not funded by the government. So, in my opinion, the saying that the grass is always greener on the other side is not true.

And what is your favorite part of doing the research or the whole process of research, being a researcher?

Lab work is quite exciting, especially when it works. What's also very interesting is the collaboration part. Because the more you work, the more you understand that you can't do everything alone. Because you don't have all the instruments, all the knowledge.

So you have to collaborate if you want to do something great. Even when writing proposals, you communicate with different groups, and through communication, you learn about different fields.

It's constant learning but in a good, exciting way. Not because you have to, but because you appear in situations that teach you something.

And is there anything specific you hope or wish to see in the future regarding your research and your field?

I really wish that some group would create a simulation chamber that would run, let's say, for 50 years. That someone would have funding and plan for really grand experiments.

Because if we imagine that it took around a billion years for the first cells to form, it's hard to argue that we will get very exciting results within a year. It's very unlikely.

Well, when you consider that even those molecules that can replicate could be alive, you start to think that everything that surrounds us is living, including maybe even the planet. It's evolving and changing just on a different scale, which we cannot comprehend.

So I think that such public experiments would encourage people to be more aware and try to live more sustainably, waste less, and be more focused on nature, like all the beauty it contains, rather than finding new ways to exploit it, how to get more resources, and so on.

I believe the research about the essence of life brings value in that sense.

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