Related papers: Universal Sequence Replication, Reversible Polymer…
Polymerases are protein enzymes that move along nucleic acid chains and catalyze template-based polymerization reactions during gene transcription and replication. The polymerases also substantially improve transcription or replication…
A mystery about the origins of life is which molecular structures $-$ and what spontaneous processes $-$ drove the autocatalytic transition from simple chemistry to biology? Using the HP lattice model of polymer sequence spaces leads to the…
The emergence of functional oligonucleotides on early Earth required a molecular selection mechanism to screen for specific sequences with prebiotic functions. Cyclic processes such as daily temperature oscillations were ubiquitous in this…
It is well known that life on Earth alters its environment over evolutionary and geological timescales. An important open question is whether this is a result of evolutionary optimization or a universal feature of life. In the latter case,…
We study a one-dimensional lattice of $N$ sites each occupied by a mathematical "polymer," that is, is a binary random sequence of arbitrary length $n$, or equivalently, a rooted path of $n$ links on an infinite binary tree. The average…
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…
In the study of life's origins, a key challenge is understanding how RNA could have polymerized and subsequently replicated in early Earth. We present a theoretical and computational framework to model the non-enzymatic polymerization of…
We study the dynamics of an ideal polymer chain in a crowded, viscoelastic medium and in the presence of active forces. The motion of the centre of mass and of individual monomers is calculated. On time scales that are comparable to the…
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…
The mechanism and driving forces of chromosome segregation in the bacterial cell cycle of E. coli is one of the least understood events in its life cycle. Using principles of entropic repulsion between polymer loops confined in a cylinder,…
Selection is central to biological evolution, yet there has been no general experimental framework for quantifying selection in chemical systems before life. Here we demonstrate that selection in a prebiological chemical system can be…
Each living species carries a complex DNA sequence that determines their unique features and functionalities. It is generally assumed that life started from a random pool of oligonucleotides sequences, generated by a prebiotic…
Many examples of cooperation exist in biology. In chemical systems however, which can sometimes be quite complex, we do not appear to observe intricate cooperative interactions. A key question for the origin of life, is then how can…
The origin of life is often framed primarily as a chemical problem, yet life's defining feature is evolution. Advances in geochemistry, prebiotic chemistry, and molecular biology have produced diverse scenarios for the emergence of genomes,…
In this paper, we investigate a stochastic model describing the time evolution of a polymerization process. A polymer is a macro-molecule resulting from the aggregation of several elementary sub-units called monomers. Polymers can grow by…
Explaining the origin of life requires us to explain how self-replication arises. To be specific, how can a self-replicating entity develop spontaneously from a chemical reaction system in which no reaction is self-replicating? Previously…
The growth, form, and division of prebiotic vesicles, membraneous bags of fluid of varying components and shapes is hypothesized to have served as the substrate for the origin of life. The dynamics of these out-of-equilibrium structures is…
Non-equilibrium selection pressures were proposed for the formation of oligonucleotides with rich functionalities encoded in their sequences, such as catalysis. Since phase separation was shown to direct various chemical processes, we ask…
Due to recent advances in synthetic biology and artificial life, the origin of life is currently a hot topic of research. We review the literature and argue that the two traditionally competing "replicator-first" and "metabolism-first"…
The origin of life must have been preceded by Darwin-like evolutionary dynamics that could propagate it. How did that adaptive dynamics arise? And from what prebiotic molecules? Using evolutionary invasion analysis, we develop a universal…