Related papers: Life's Chirality From Prebiotic Environments
We explore the interplay between tunneling process and chiral interactions in the discrimination of chiral states for an ensemble of molecules in a biological environment. Each molecule is described by an asymmetric double-well potential…
This thesis broadly concerns the origins of life problem, pursuing a joint approach that combines general philosophical/conceptual reflection on the problem along with more detailed and formal scientific modelling work oriented in the…
Cellular heterogeneity is an immanent property of biological systems that covers very different aspects of life ranging from genetic diversity to cell-to-cell variability driven by stochastic molecular interactions, and noise induced cell…
It has been proposed that spin-polarized cosmic radiation can induce asymmetric changes in helical biopolymers that may account for the emergence of biological homochirality. The parity violation in the weak interaction has direct…
The peptides in biosystems are homochiral polymers of L-amino acids, but razemisate slowly by an active isomerization kinetics. The chemical reactions in biosystems are, however, reversible and what racemisates the peptides at the water…
The search for life in the Solar System hinges on data from planetary missions. Detecting biosignatures based on molecular identity, isotopic composition, or chiral excess requires measurements that current and planned missions can only…
Cellular biology exists embedded in a world dominated by random dynamics and chance. Many vital molecules and pieces of cellular machinery diffuse within cells, moving along random trajectories as they collide with the other biomolecular…
The article seeks to formulate a synergetic law that is posited to be of common physicochemical and biological nature: an evolving system, possessing free energy and elements with chiral asymmetry may change the type of symmetry inside one…
Why life persists at the edge of chaos is a question at the very heart of evolution. Here we show that molecules taking part in biochemical processes from small molecules to proteins are critical quantum mechanically. Electronic…
Molecular chirality is a key concept in chemistry with implications for the origin of life and the manufacturing of pharmaceuticals. Previous simulations of a chiral molecular model with an energetic bias towards homochiral interactions…
Photosynthesis is an ancient metabolic process that began on the early Earth, offering plentiful energy to organisms that utilize it, to the extent that they can achieve global significance. The potential exists for similar processes to…
In this paper, I tentatively put forward a new hypothesis that the emergence of a single chiral form of biomolecules in living organisms is specifically determined by the electron spin state during their enzyme-catalyzed synthesis…
We show how spatiotemporal fluctuations can induce spontaneous symmetry breaking in systems which are perfectly symmetric in the absence of fluctuations. We illustrate this in the context of the autocatalytic production of chiral…
Understanding how biological homochirality emerged remains a challenge for the researchers interested in the origin of life. During the last decades, stable non-racemic steady states of nonequilibrium chemical systems have been discussed as…
A hard difficulty in Astrobiology is the precise definition of what life is. All living beings have a cellular structure, so it is not possible to have a broader concept of life hence the search for extraterrestrial life is restricted to…
Thousands of exoplanets orbit nearby stars, showcasing a remarkable diversity in mass, size, and orbits. With the James Webb Space Telescope now operational, we are observing exoplanet atmospheres and aiming to reach down to small,…
Current investigations of exoplanet biosignatures have focused on static evidence of life, such as the presence of biogenic gases like O2 or CH4. However, the expected diversity of terrestrial planet atmospheres and the likelihood of both…
Since time immemorial life has been viewed as being fragile, yet over the past few decades it has been found that many extreme environments are inhabited by organisms known as extremophiles.Knowledge of their emergence, adaptability, and…
Chirality is a ubiquitous phenomenon in which a symmetry between left- and right-handed objects is broken, examples in nature ranging from subatomic particles and molecules to living organisms. In particle physics, the weak force is…
If the origin of life is rare and sensitive to the local conditions at the site of its emergence, then, using the principle of mediocrity within a multiverse framework, we may expect to find ourselves in a universe that is better than usual…