Related papers: The Lipid-RNA World
Geological evidence suggests liquid water near the Earth's surface as early as 4.4 billion years ago when the faint young Sun only radiated about 70% of its modern power output. At this point, the Earth should have been a global snowball if…
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…
Implicit in the RNA world hypothesis is that prebiotic RNA synthesis, despite occurring in an environment without biochemical catalysts, produced the long RNA polymers which are essential to the formation of life. In order to investigate…
Membrane phase-separation is a mechanism that biological membranes often use to locally concentrate specific lipid species in order to organize diverse membrane processes. Phase separation has also been explored as a tool for the design of…
The evolution of colour vision is captivating, as it reveals the adaptive strategies of extinct species while simultaneously inspiring innovations in modern imaging technology. In this study, we present a simplified model of visual…
The magma ocean concept was first conceived to explain the geology of the Moon, but hemispherical or global oceans of silicate melt could be a widespread "lava world" phase of rocky planet accretion, and could persist on planets on…
Previous studies modelled the origin of life and the emergence of photosynthesis on the early Earth-i.e. the origin of plants-in terms of biological heat engines that worked on thermal cycling caused by suspension in convecting water. In…
The homochirality of the molecules of life has been a vexing problem with no generally accepted solution to date. Since a racemic mixture of chiral nucleotides frustrates the extension and replication of RNA and DNA, understanding the…
This work presents a 2.5-dimensional simulation study of the instability of current-sheets located in a medium with a strong density variation along the current layer. The initial force-free configuration is observed to undergo a two-stage…
A novel two-leaflet description of lipid membranes is proposed. Within its framework, phase separation phenomena in multicomponent biological membranes are analyzed. As we show, interactions between the leaflets tend to suppress macroscopic…
In this work, we discovered a fundamental connection between selection for protein stability and emergence of preferred structures of proteins. Using standard exact 3-dimensional lattice model we evolve sequences starting from random ones…
Many models for the origin of life have focused on understanding how evolution can drive the refinement of a preexisting enzyme, such as the evolution of efficient replicase activity. Here we present a model for what was, arguably, an even…
Several clues indicate that Titan's atmosphere has been depleted in methane during some period of its history, possibly as recently as 0.5-1 billion years ago. It could also happen in the future. Under these conditions, the atmosphere…
Classical Wolf Rayet (WR) stars are direct supernova progenitors undergoing vigorous mass-loss. Understanding the dense and fast outflows of such WR stars is thus crucial for understanding advanced stages of stellar evolution, the dynamical…
Planet formation models suggest that the small exoplanets that migrate from beyond the snowline of the protoplanetary disk likely contain water-ice-rich cores ($\sim 50\%$ by mass), also known as the water worlds. While the observed radius…
Biosystems contain an almost infinite amount of vital important details, which together ensure their life. There are, however, some common structures and reactions in the systems: the homochirality of carbohydrates and proteins, the…
Enhanced dynamical fluctuations of RNAs, facilitated by a network of water molecules with strong interactions with RNA, are suspected to be critical in their ability to respond to a variety of cellular signals. Using atomically detailed…
The radius valley (or gap) in the observed distribution of exoplanet radii, which separates smaller super-Earths from larger sub-Neptunes, is a key feature that theoretical models must explain. Conventionally, it is interpreted as the…
Lipolysis is a life-essential metabolic process, which supplies fatty acids stored in lipid droplets to the body in order to match the demands of building new cells and providing cellular energy. In this paper, we present a first…
Morphogenesis involves the transformation of initially simple shapes, such as multicellular spheroids, into more complex $3D$ shapes. These shape changes are governed by mechanical forces including molecular motor-generated forces as well…