Claudia Bonfio

Claudia Bonfio is a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on understanding the origins of life through investigations into prebiotic chemistry and the emergence of functional protocells. She leads the Bonfio Group, which explores lipid membrane formation, coacervate systems, and the interplay between biochemical processes in early Earth conditions.

Her work bridges prebiotic chemistry with modern biochemical principles, addressing questions like how diverse lipids could form without enzymes and how membraneless compartments like coacervates could have supported early biochemical reactions. The lab combines experimental approaches from chemistry and biophysics to reconstruct plausible pathways from molecular self-assembly to functional protocells.

• Key Research Themes: Primitive membrane evolution, coacervate functionality, non-enzymatic lipid diversification.
• Recent Publications: Focus on Mg2+ effects on phospholipids (2024), coacervate nucleic acid interactions (2025 preprint), and prebiotic phospholipid synthesis (2023).