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Of the twenty amino acids used in proteins, ten were formed in Miller's atmospheric discharge experiments. The two other major proposed sources of prebiotic amino acid synthesis include formation in hydrothermal vents and delivery to Earth…
With unprecedented advances in genetic engineering we are starting to see progressively more original examples of synthetic life. As such organisms become more common it is desirable to be able to distinguish between natural and artificial…
Protein synthesis is an important determinant of microbial growth and response that demands a high amount of metabolic and biosynthetic resources. Despite these costs, microbial species from different taxa and habitats massively synthesize…
The probability that life spontaneously emerges in a suitable environment (abiogenesis) is one of the major unknowns in astrobiology. Assessing its value is impeded by the lack of an accepted theory for the origin of life, and is further…
One of the most interesting unsolved questions in science today is the question of life on other planets. At the present time it is safe to say that we do not have much of an idea as to whether life is common or exceedingly rare in the…
We study the probabilities of evolution based on random mutations and natural selection. We conclude that evolution to multicellular eukaryots, or even prokaryots, is unlikely to be the result of only random mutations. Complex organisms…
The origin of life on Earth via the spontaneous emergence of a protocell prior to Darwinian evolution remains a fundamental open question in physics and chemistry. Here, we develop a conceptual framework based on information theory and…
Darwin's hypothesis that all extant life forms are descendants of a last common ancestor cell and diversification of life forms results from gradual mutation plus natural selection represents a mainstream view that has influenced biology…
The origin of life is shrouded in mystery, with few surviving clues, obscured by evolutionary competition. Previous reviews have touched on the complementary approaches of top-down and bottom-up synthetic biology to augment our…
Any search for present or past life beyond Earth should consider the initial processes and related environmental controls that might have led to its start. As on Earth, such an understanding lies well beyond how simple organic molecules…
Concomitant with the evolution of biological diversity must have been the evolution of mechanisms that facilitate evolution, due to the essentially infinite complexity of protein sequence space. We describe how evolvability can be an object…
Variation and selection are the core principles of Darwinian evolution, yet quantitatively relating the diversity of a population to its capacity to respond to selection is challenging. Here, we examine this problem at a molecular level in…
Proteins have evolved through mutations, amino acid substitutions, since life appeared on Earth, some 109 years ago. The study of these phenomena has been of particular significance because of their impact on protein stability, function,…
Would another origin of life resemble Earth's biochemical use of amino acids? Here we review current knowledge at three levels: 1) Could other classes of chemical structure serve as building blocks for biopolymer structure and catalysis?…
Since the Hadean era of Earth's history, peptides/proteins and RNA have undergone a complex evolutionary trajectory. Originating from simple monomeric units, these molecules evolved abiotically under various biochemical and biophysical…
Life arose on Earth sometime in the first few hundred million years after the young planet had cooled to the point that it could support water-based organisms on its surface. The early emergence of life on Earth has been taken as evidence…
The poly-tRNA model was recently presented for the origin and evolution of genetic coding. This model has led to a rather precise description of what might have occurred at the beginning of protein synthesis in the first life form. Here, we…
It has been conjectured that evolution exerted pressure to preserve amino acids bearing thermodynamic, kinetic, and functional roles. In this letter we show that the physical requirement to maintain protein stability gives rise to a…
The evolution of life has been a big enigma despite rapid advancements in the fields of biochemistry, astrobiology, and astrophysics in recent years. The answer to this puzzle has been as mind-boggling as the riddle relating to evolution of…
The origins of life stands among the great open scientific questions of our time. While a number of proposals exist for possible starting points in the pathway from non-living to living matter, these have so far not achieved states of…