Related papers: Primordial RNA Replication and Applications in PCR…
A key open question in the study of life is the origin of biomolecular homochirality: almost every life-form on Earth has exclusively levorotary amino acids and dextrorotary sugars. Will the same handedness be preferred if life is found…
Using a combination of theory and computer simulations, we study the translocation of an RNA molecule, pulled through a solid-state nanopore by an optical tweezer, as a method to determine its secondary structure. The resolution with which…
The origin of life is one of the greatest mysteries. The mechanism for the synthesis of DNA is synonymous with the chemical origin of life, and theories have been developed along many lines of reasoning, but resolving all requirements…
Our world is ambiguous and this is reflected in the data we use to train our algorithms. This is particularly true when we try to model natural processes where collected data is affected by noisy measurements and differences in measurement…
Life depends as much on the flow of information as on the flow of energy. Here we review the many efforts to make this intuition precise. Starting with the building blocks of information theory, we explore examples where it has been…
The oldest forms of living organisms on Earth are about 3.5 billion years old, and they are found in hydrothermal deposits, and it is often hypothesized that life originated there. But the hydrothermal systems with a fairly strong flow of…
Our understanding of the evolutionary process has gone a long way since the publication, 150 years ago, of "On the origin of species" by Charles R. Darwin. The XXth Century witnessed great efforts to embrace replication, mutation, and…
We propose a simple mechanism for the self-replication of protocells. Our main hypothesis is that the amphiphilic molecules composing the membrane bilayer are synthesised inside the protocell through globally exothermic chemical reactions.…
One of the fundamental problems of modern physics is how the classical world, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics and the whole irreversibility emerges from the quantum reality with reversible evolution. This relates to the problem of measurement…
The phenomenon of life is discussed within a framework of its origin as defined by four hypotheses. The 1. hypothesis says: Life, as we know, is (H-C-N-O) based and relies on the number of bulk (Na-Mg-P-S-Cl-K-Ca) and trace elements…
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…
All life, including cells and artificial protocells, must integrate diverse molecules into a single unit in order to reproduce. Despite expected pressure to evolve a simple system with the fastest replication speed, the mechanism by which…
Thermogenesis is a physiological activity of releasing heat that originates from intracellular biochemical reactions. Recent experimental studies discovered that externally applied heat changes intracellular signaling locally, resulting in…
A central and long-standing issue in evolutionary theory is the origin of the biological variation upon which natural selection acts1. Some hypotheses suggest that evolutionary change represents an adaptation to the surrounding environment…
Primordial nucleosynthesis is rightly hailed as one of the great successes of the standard cosmological model. Here we consider the initial forging of elements in the recently proposed Rh = ct universe, a cosmology that demands linear…
Concepts rooted in physics are becoming increasingly important in biology as we transition to an era in which quantitative descriptions of all processes from molecular to cellular level are needed. In this essay I discuss two unexpected…
Biological information processing manifests a huge variety in its complexity and capability among different organisms, which presumably stems from the evolutionary optimization under limited computational resources. Starting from the…
Primary human cells offer the most faithful representation of native human physiology, yet their practical utility is constrained by the difficulty of introducing exogenous genetic material. Electroporation provides a promising non-viral…
Biological systems reach organizational complexity that far exceeds the complexity of any known inanimate objects. Biological entities undoubtedly obey the laws of quantum physics and statistical mechanics. However, is modern physics…
Evolution of the amino acid sequences of transthyretin (TTR) can provide additional information about its dynamics that both complements and extends the already extensive static structural data. Protein dynamics is largely driven by…