Related papers: Origin of Information Encoding in Nucleic Acids th…
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…
We present a scenario for the origin of biological coding. In this context, coding is a semiotic relationship between chemical information stored in one location that links to chemical information stored in a separate location. Coding…
Thanks to the long-term collaborations between nuclear and astrophysics, we have good understanding on stellar nucleosynthesis, except for the elements around Ti and some neutron-capture elements. From the comparison between observations…
Natural supports of information are given by random copolymers such as DNA or RNA where information is coded in the sequence of covalent bonds. At the molecular scale, the stochastic growth of a single copolymer with or without a template…
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…
We attempt to provide physical interpretations of light-induced desorption phenomena that have recently been observed for alkali atoms on glass surfaces of alkali vapor cells used in atomic physics experiments. We find that the observed…
Recent synthetic studies on the organic molecules tetracene and pentacene have found certain dimers and oligomers to exhibit an intense absorption in the visible region of the spectrum which is not present in the monomer or many…
Ultraviolet (UV) light plays a key role in surficial theories of the origin of life, and numerous studies have focused on constraining the atmospheric transmission of UV radiation on early Earth. However, the UV transmission of the natural…
UV photoinduced fragmentation of protonated aromatics amino acids have emerged the last few years, coming from a situation where nothing was known to what we think a good understanding of the optical properties. We will mainly focus this…
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…
Artificial organisms are computer programs that self-replicate, mutate, compete and evolve. How do these lifelike information-processing behaviours could arise in diverse far-from-equilibrium physical systems remains an open question. Here,…
The absorption of ultraviolet light creates excitations in DNA, which subsequently start moving in the helix. Their fate is important for an understanding of photo damage, and is determined by the interplay of electronic couplings between…
The genetic code maps the sixty-four nucleotide triplets (codons) to twenty amino-acids. While the biochemical details of this code were unraveled long ago, its origin is still obscure. We review information-theoretic approaches to the…
We present a spectral analysis of a 30d, near-continuous observation of the Seyfert 1 galaxy NGC 7469 with RXTE. Daily integrations show strong spectral changes during the observation. Ourmain result is that we find the X-ray spectral index…
Dissipative adaptation is a general thermodynamic mechanism that explains self-organization in a broad class of driven classical many-body systems. It establishes how the most likely (adapted) states of a system subjected to a given drive…
Aqueous solutions of disodium cromoglycate (DSCG), a representative model system for chromonic liquid crystals, exhibit temperature- and concentration-dependent phase behaviors spanning isotropic, nematic, and columnar phases, as well as…
Interactions between proteins and their solvent environment can be studied in a bottom-up approach using hydrogen-bonded chromophore-solvent clusters. The ultrafast dynamics following UV-light-induced electronic excitation of the…
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 re-examine the possibility of ultrahigh energy cosmic rays being accelerated in nearby dormant quasars. We particularize our study to heavy nuclei to accommodate the spectrum and nuclear composition recently reported by the Pierre Auger…
Ultraviolet radiation is known to inhibit photosynthesis, induce DNA destruction and cause damage to a wide variety of proteins and lipids. In particular, UV radiation between 200-300 nm becomes energetically very damaging to most of the…