Related papers: Primordial RNA Replication and Applications in PCR…
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…
The thermosynthesis concept, biological free energy gain from thermal cycling, is combined with the concept of the RNA World. The resulting overall origin of life model gives new explanations for the emergence of the genetic code and the…
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…
Understanding the thermodynamic function of life may shed light on its origin. Life, as are all irreversible processes, is contingent on entropy production. Entropy production is a measure of the rate of the tendency of Nature to explore…
Modern developments in nonequilibrium thermodynamics have significant implications for the origins of life. The reasons for this are closely related to a generalized version of the second law of thermodynamics recently found for entropy…
Through in-depth thinking and reasoning about the conditions required for cells to maintain unchanged material distribution, it is concluded that life metabolic reactions require high information content. However, the self-replication of a…
The RNA World hypothesis predicts that self-replicating RNAs evolved before DNA genomes and coded proteins. Despite widespread support for the RNA World, self-replicating RNAs have yet to be identified in a natural context, leaving a key…
The aim of this essay is to analyze the role of quantum mechanics as an inherent characteristic of life. During the last ten years the problem of the origin of life has become an innovative research subject approached by many authors. The…
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…
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…
Research investigating the origins of life usually focuses on exploring possible life-bearing chemistries in the pre-biotic Earth, or else on synthetic approaches. Little work has been done exploring fundamental issues concerning the…
The dominant paradigm in origin of life research is that of an RNA world. However, despite experimental progress towards the spontaneous formation of RNA, the RNA world hypothesis still has its problems. Here, we introduce a novel…
We propose an alternative to the prevailing two origin of life narratives, one based on a replicator first hypothesis, and one based on a metabolism first hypothesis. Both hypotheses have known difficulties: All known evolvable molecular…
We provide a non-equilibrium thermodynamic description of the life-cycle of a droplet based, chemically feasible, system of protocells. By coupling the protocells metabolic kinetics with its thermodynamics, we demonstrate how the system can…
Although it has been notoriously difficult to pin down precisely what it is that makes life so distinctive and remarkable, there is general agreement that its informational aspect is one key property, perhaps the key property. The unique…
We review the thermal history of the Universe. We obtain a new estimate for the thermal history of the Earth over the past four billion years using a biological thermometer based on (1) a rough estimate of the absolute time calibration of…
The origin of life on Earth via the spontaneous emergence of a protocell prior to Darwinian evolution remains a fundamental open question in physics and chemistry. Here, we develop a conceptual framework based on information theory and…
This paper presents and tests a previously unrecognised mechanism for driving a replicating molecular system on the prebiotic earth. It is proposed that cell-free RNA replication in the primordial soup may have been driven by self-sustained…
Self-replicability is the unique attribute observed in all the living organisms and the question how the life was physically initiated could be equivalent to the question how self-replicating informative polymers were formed in the abiotic…
The question "What is life?" has been asked and studied by the researchers of various fields. Nevertheless, no global theory which unified various aspects of life has been proposed so far. Considering that the physical principle for the…