Related papers: A Prerequisite for Life
According to the universally accepted concept of the development of life on the Earth, multicellular organisms initially emerged as a result of either the union of identical unicellular organisms with the following functional…
The ribosome is a macromolecular complex which is responsible for protein synthesis in all living cells according to their transcribed genetic information. Using X-ray crystallography and, more recently, cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM),…
Standard definitions of habitability assume that life requires the presence of planetary gravity wells to stabilize liquid water and regulate surface temperature. Here the consequences of relaxing this assumption are evaluated. Temperature,…
Bacteria are able to respond to environmental signals by changing their rules of movement. When we take into account chemical signals in the environment, this behaviour is often called chemotaxis. At the individual-level, chemotaxis…
Life occurs in ionic solutions, not pure water. The ionic mixtures of these solutions are very different from water and have dramatic effects on the cells and molecules of biological systems, yet theories and simulations cannot calculate…
It is argued that selection criteria usually referred to as "anthropic conditions" for the existence of intelligent (typical) observers widely adopted in cosmology amount only to preconditions for primitive life. The existence of life does…
Water near hydrophobic surfaces is like that at a liquid-vapor interface, where fluctuations in water density are substantially enhanced compared to that in bulk water. Here we use molecular simulations with specialized sampling techniques…
We describe some of the important physical characteristics of the `pathways', i.e. dynamical processes, by which molecular, nanoscale and micron-scale self-assembly occurs. We highlight the fact that there exist features of self-assembly…
Biomolecular condensates are liquid- or gel-like droplets of proteins and nucleic acids formed at least in part through liquid-liquid phase separation. Condensates enable diverse functions of cells and the pathogens that infect them,…
Flagellar-driven locomotion plays a critical role in bacterial attachment and colonization of surfaces, contributing to the risks of contamination and infection. Tremendous attempts to uncover the underlying principles governing bacterial…
Microbial ecosystems are remarkably diverse, stable, and often consist of a balanced mixture of core and peripheral species. Here we propose a conceptual model exhibiting all these emergent properties in quantitative agreement with real…
Sophorolipids are well-known scaled-up microbial glycolipid biosurfactants with a strong potential for commercialization due to their biological origin and mildness in contact with the skin and the environment compared to classical…
Microheterogeneity, as a fundamental natural property, is widely presented in a range of microscopic systems such as polymer systems, biomacromolecular systems, and nanosystems, however, the construction of molecular systems of this form…
Recent detections of carbon-bearing molecules in the atmosphere of a candidate Hycean world, K2-18 b, with JWST are opening the prospects for characterising potential biospheres on temperate exoplanets. Hycean worlds are a recently…
Fluids with spatial density variations of single or mixed molecules play a key role in biophysics, soft matter and materials science. The fluid structures usually form via spinodal decomposition or nucleation following an instantaneous…
Living cells are soft bodies of a characteristic form, but endowed with a capacity for a steady turnover of their structures. Both of these material properties, i.e. recovery of the shape after an external stress has been imposed and…
Many systems in chemistry, biology, finance and social sciences present emerging features which are not easy to guess from the elementary interactions of their microscopic individual components. In the past, the macroscopic behavior of such…
After Earth's origin, our host star, the Sun, was shining 20 to 25 percent less brightly than today. Without greenhouse-like conditions to warm the atmosphere, our early planet would have been an ice ball and life may never have evolved.…
The observed single-handedness of biological amino acids and sugars has long been attributed to autocatalysis. However, the stability of homochiral states in deterministic autocatalytic systems relies on cross inhibition of the two chiral…
A theory of aging based on the principles of the kinetics of chemical reactions and the rules of natural selection of organisms is proposed. The theory is based on a hypothesis that the biochemical processes in the organism can be described…