Related papers: The Lipid-RNA World
Life emerged on the Earth within the first quintile of its habitable window, but a technological civilization did not blossom until its last. Efforts to infer the rate of abiogenesis, based on its early emergence, are frustrated by the…
The Heimburg-Jackson model, or thermodynamic soliton theory of nervous impulses, has a well-established record as an alternative model for studying the dynamics of nerve impulses and lipid bilayers. Within this framework, nerve impulses can…
We describe a simple coarse-grained model which is suited to study lipid layers and their phase transitions. Lipids are modeled by short semiflexible chains of beads with a solvophilic head and a solvophobic tail component. They are forced…
The low-redshift evolution of the intergalactic medium is investigated using hydrodynamic cosmological simulations. The assumed cosmological model is a critical density cold dark matter universe. The imposed uniform background of ionizing…
We propose a scenario for the prebiotic co-evolution of RNA and of fast folding proteins with large entropy gaps as observed today. We show from very general principles that the folding and unfolding of the proteins synthesized by RNA can…
Living organisms have some common structures, chemical reactions and molecular structures. The organisms consist of cells with cell division, they have homochirality of protein and carbohydrate units, and metabolism, and genetics, and they…
The interpretation electrical phenomena in biomembranes is usually based on the assumption that the experimentally found discrete ion conduction events are due to a particular class of proteins called ion channels while the lipid membrane…
The structure of the self-cleaving hairpin ribozyme is well characterized, and its folding has been examined in bulk and by single-molecule fluorescence, establishing the importance of cations, especially magnesium in the stability of the…
The search for habitable conditions and signs of life on exoplanets is a major frontier in modern astronomy. Detecting atmospheric signatures of Earth-like exoplanets is challenging due to their small sizes and relatively thin atmospheres.…
For more than four decades, scientists have been trying to find an answer to one of the most fundamental questions in paleoclimatology, the `faint young Sun problem'. For the early Earth, models of stellar evolution predict a solar energy…
An origin of Earth life on Mars would resolve significant inconsistencies between the inferred history of life and Earth's geologic history. Life as we know it utilizes amino acids, nucleic acids, and lipids for the metabolic,…
Plasma membranes appear as deformable systems wherein molecules are free to move and diffuse giving rise to condensed microdomains (composed of ordered lipids, transmembrane proteins and cholesterol) surrounded by disordered lipid…
A new model for the intermediate compound of the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) is proposed, for the electrochemical reduction of hydrogen in the presence of bisulfate on platinum(111). The formation of this compound, a regular 2…
This paper provides experimental and numerical evidence supporting the occurrence of liposome congregation at the floors of meteor craters on Early Earth. This work builds on our earlier research, which demonstrated that liposomes submerged…
Random lateral translocation of lipids and proteins is a universal process on membrane surfaces. Local aggregation or organization of lipids and proteins can be induced when this lateral random diffusion is mediated by the electrostatic…
Understanding the physics of planetary magma oceans has been the subject of growing efforts, in light of the increasing abundance of Solar system samples and extrasolar surveys. A rocky planet harboring such an ocean is likely to interact…
We propose that retinal-based phototrophy arose early in the evolution of life on Earth, profoundly impacting the development of photosynthesis and creating implications for the search for life beyond our planet. While the early…
The complex physicochemical structures and chemical reactions in living organism have some common features: (1) The life processes take place in the cytosol in the cells, which, from a physicochemical point of view is an emulsion of…
Elliptical galaxies today appear aligned with the large-scale structure of the Universe, but it is still an open question when they acquire this alignment. Observational data is currently insufficient to provide constraints on the time…
Leading theories for the presence of plate tectonics on Earth typically appeal to the role of present day conditions in promoting rheological weakening of the lithosphere. However, it is unknown whether the conditions of the early Earth…