Related papers: The Lipid-RNA World
While modern physics and biology satisfactorily explain the passage from the Big Bang to the formation of Earth and the first cells to present-day life, respectively, the origins of biochemical life still remain an open question. Since…
Vesicle fusion is an important process underlying cell division, transport, and membrane trafficking. In phospholipid systems, a range of fusogens including divalent cations and depletants have been shown to induce adhesion, hemifusion, and…
Protocells are supposed to have played a key role in the self-organizing processes leading to the emergence of life. Existing models either (i) describe protocell architecture and dynamics, given the existence of sets of collectively…
A poorly understood step in the transition from a chemical to a biological world is the emergence of self-replicating molecular systems. We study how a precursor for such a replicator might arise in a hydrothermal RNA reactor, which…
A microscopic model of the lipid membrane is constructed that provides analytically tractable description of the physical mechanism of the first order liquid-gel phase transition. We demonstrate that liquid-gel phase transition is…
It has been hypothesized that in the era just before the last universal common ancestor emerged, life on earth was fundamentally collective. Ancient life forms shared their genetic material freely through massive horizontal gene transfer…
We present results of three dimensional simulations of the uppermost part of the sun, at 3 stages of its evolution. Each model includes physically realistic radiative-hydrodynamics (the Eddington approximation is used in the optically thin…
This article summarizes a variety of physical mechanisms proposed in the literature, which can generate micro- and nanodomains in multicomponent lipid bilayers and biomembranes. It mainly focusses on lipid-driven mechanisms that do not…
In the aftermath of the Moon-forming giant impact, the Hadean Earth's mantle and surface crystallized from a global magma ocean blanketed by a dense volatile-rich atmosphere. While prior studies have explored the thermal evolution of such…
Low-gravity waterworlds ($M\lesssim 0.1 M_{\oplus}$) are of interest for their potential habitability. The weakly bound atmospheres of such worlds have proportionally larger radiative surfaces and are more susceptible to escape. We conduct…
A minimalist simulation model for lipid bilayers is presented. Each lipid is represented by a flexible chain of beads in implicit solvent. The hydrophobic effect is mimicked through an intermolecular pair potential localized at the…
Based on the oligomer-world hypothesis we propose an abstract model where the molecular recognition among oligomers is described in the shape space. The origin of life in the oligomer world is regarded as the establishment of a metabolic…
Water molecules play an important role in providing unique environments for biological reactions on cell membranes. It is widely believed that water molecules form bridges that connect lipid molecules and stabilize cell membranes. Using…
Combining extensive molecular dynamics simulations of lipid bilayer systems of varying chemical composition with single-trajectory analyses we systematically elucidate the stochastic nature of the lipid motion. We observe subdiffusion over…
The history of the Earth has been marked by major ecological transitions, driven by metabolic innovation, that radically reshaped the composition of the oceans and atmosphere. The nature and magnitude of the earliest transitions, hundreds…
A key result of hydrogravitational dynamics cosmology relevant to astrobiology is the early formation of vast numbers of hot primordial-gas planets in million-solar-mass clumps as the dark matter of galaxies and the hosts of first life.…
The Hadean, once thought to be uninhabitable and tumultuous, has more recently been recontextualized as a clement time in which oceans, land, and life likely appeared on Earth. This non-exhaustive chapter follows multiple threads from…
According to the lipid raft hypothesis, biological lipid membranes are laterally heterogeneous and filled with nanoscale ordered "raft" domains, which are believed to play an important role for the organization of proteins in membranes.…
About 4 billion years ago, the Earth probably fulfilled the environmental conditions necessary to favour the transition from primitive chemistry to life. Based on a theoretical hairpin duplication origin of tRNAs and their putative…
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,…