Related papers: How did prebiotic polymers become informational fo…
Motivated by the problem of domain formation in chromosomes, we studied a co--polymer model where only a subset of the monomers feel attractive interactions. These monomers are displaced randomly from a regularly-spaced pattern, thus…
Models of protein energetics which neglect interactions between amino acids that are not adjacent in the native state, such as the Go model, encode or underlie many influential ideas on protein folding. Implicit in this simplification is a…
We investigate the mechanisms underlying selective molecular recognition of single heteropolymers at chemically structured planar surfaces. To this end, we study systems with two-letter (HP) lattice heteropolymers by exact enumeration…
We present results of Monte Carlo computer simulations of a coarse-grained hydrophobic-polar Go-like heteropolymer model and discuss thermodynamic properties and kinetics of an exemplified heteropolymer, exhibiting two-state folding…
The improbability of a spontaneously generated self-assembling molecule has suggested that life began with a set of simpler, collectively replicating elements, such as an enclosed autocatalytic set of polymers (or protocell). Since…
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…
Life is fundamentally a scientific enigma. The interplay between chaos, entropy dynamics, and Prigogine's dissipative systems offers profound insights into the emergence, stabilization, and eventual collapse of far-from-equilibrium systems.…
We present a statistical mechanics approach to the protein folding problem. We first review some of the basic properties of proteins, and introduce some physical models to describe their thermodynamics. These models rely on a random…
We describe a class of "bare bones" models of homopolymers which undergo coil-globule collapse and proteins which fold into their native states in free space or into denatured states when captured by an attractive substrate as the…
Why life persists at the edge of chaos is a question at the very heart of evolution. Here we show that molecules taking part in biochemical processes from small molecules to proteins are critical quantum mechanically. Electronic…
In this paper we analyse both the dynamics and the high density physics of the infinite dimensional lattice gas model for random heteropolymers recently introduced in \cite{jort}. Restricting ourselves to site-disordered heteropolymers, we…
It has been pointed out that if an autocatalytic cycle produces primitive membrane chemicals, it can compose a self-maintaining proto cell. Moreover, it is known that a proto cell can divide itself spontaneously as it grows. An unsolved…
All living systems -- from the origin of life to modern cells -- rely on a set of biochemical reactions that are simultaneously self-sustaining and autocatalytic. This notion of an autocatalytic set has been formalized graph-theoretically…
A general and basic model of primordial evolution--a soup of reacting finitary and discrete processes--is employed to identify and analyze fundamental mechanisms that generate and maintain complex structures in prebiotic systems. The…
In previous work, RAF theory has been developed as a tool for making theoretical progress on the origin of life question, providing insight into the structure and occurrence of self-sustaining and collectively autocatalytic sets within…
We study the conformational properties of heteropolymers containing two types of monomers A and B, modeled as self-avoiding random walks on a regular lattice. Such a model can describe in particular the sequences of hydrophobic and…
Using a simple three-dimensional lattice copolymer model and Monte Carlo dynamics, we study the collapse and folding of protein-like heteropolymers. The polymers are 27 monomers long and consist of two monomer types. Although these chains…
We present here a system of self-propelled particles that follow a very simple motion law in continuous space in a deterministic and asynchronous way. This system of particles is capable of producing, depending on the particle density in…
The enterobacteria lambda phage is a paradigm temperate bacteriophage. Its lysogenic and lytic life cycles echo competition between the DNA binding $\lambda$-repressor (CI) and CRO proteins. Here we scrutinize the structure, stability and…
The molecular Hubbard Hamiltonian (MHH) naturally arises for ultracold ground state polar alkali dimer molecules in optical lattices. We show that, unlike ultracold atoms, different molecules display different many-body phases due to…