Related papers: A Polyaddition Model for the Prebiotic Polymerizat…
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…
Many models for the origin of life have focused on understanding how evolution can drive the refinement of a preexisting enzyme, such as the evolution of efficient replicase activity. Here we present a model for what was, arguably, an even…
Abiotic emergence of ordered information stored in the form of RNA is an important unresolved problem concerning the origin of life. A polymer longer than 40--100 nucleotides is necessary to expect a self-replicating activity, but the…
The aims of this paper are to propose, construct and analyse microscopic kinetic models for the emergence of long chains of RNA from monomeric beta-D-ribonucleotide precursors in prebiotic circumstances. Our theory starts out from similar…
In this paper, I outline the correspondence of vector partitions with the combinatorics of dynamical systems whose states are partitions of multisets. I use the notion of a limiting shape of vector partitions to determine properties of the…
A generalized autocatalytic model for chiral polymerization is investigated in detail. Apart from enantiomeric cross-inhibition, the model allows for the autogenic (non-catalytic) formation of left and right-handed monomers from a substrate…
It is suggested that life originated in a three-step process referred to as the jigsaw model. RNA, proteins, or similar organic molecules polymerized in a dehydrated carbon-rich environment, on surfaces in a carbon-rich environment, or in…
While modern physics and biology satisfactorily explain the passage from the Big Bang to the formation of Earth and the first cells to present-day life, respectively, the origins of biochemical life still remain an open question. Since…
Origins of life research investigates how life could emerge from prebiotic chemistry only. One possible explanation provides the RNA world hypothesis. It states that life could emerge from RNA strands only, storing and transferring…
Polymers consisting of more than one type of monomer, known as copolymers, are vital to both living and synthetic systems. Copolymerisation has been studied theoretically in a number of contexts, often by considering a Markov process in…
The RNA world hypothesis suggests a pathway of how life emerged on early earth. It assumes that life started with RNA based systems, capable of storing, transmitting and replicating information, envisioning that monomers and short RNA…
Taking advantage of the base-pairing specificity and tunability of DNA interactions, we investigate the spontaneous formation of hyperbranched clusters starting from purposely designed DNA tetravalent nanostar monomers, encoding in their…
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…
Non-equilibrium conditions must have been crucial for the assembly of the first informational polymers of early life, but supporting their formation and continuous enrichment in a long-lasting environment. Here, we explore how gas bubbles…
A central challenge in the origin of life is understanding how catalytic peptide-like polymers and information-bearing nucleic acid-like polymers emerged as an interde-pendent system. This study constructs a primordial cognitive model…
We examine the statistics of conformations of a linear polymer in a solvent. The polymer is allowed to form double polymers. We closely follow a classical technique to derive a field theory for the problem from an $O\left(n\right)$…
An innovative method is proposed to generate configurations of coarse grained models for polymer melts. This method, largely inspired by chemical ``radical polymerization'', is divided in three stages: (i) nucleation of radicals (reacting…
We perform molecular-dynamics simulations for polymer melts of the coarse-grained polyvinyl alcohol model that crystallizes upon slow cooling. To establish the properties of its high temperature liquid state as a reference point, we…
Applying a force to certain supramolecular bonds may initially stabilize them, manifested by a lower dissociation rate. We show that this behavior, known as catch bonding and by now broadly reported in numerous biophysics bonds, is…
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…