Related papers: Foundations for reconstructing early microbial lif…
Ecosystems, which are intricate amalgams of biological communities and their surrounding environments, continually evolve under the influence of their myriad interactions. The world is currently facing intensifying environmental…
Essential insights on the characterization and quality of a detectable biosphere are gained by analyzing the effects of its environmental parameters. We compiled environmental and biological properties of the Phanerozoic Eon from various…
This thesis broadly concerns the origins of life problem, pursuing a joint approach that combines general philosophical/conceptual reflection on the problem along with more detailed and formal scientific modelling work oriented in the…
The colonization of Mars presents extraordinary challenges, including radiation exposure, low atmospheric pressure, and toxic regolith. Recent advancements in synthetic biology and genetic engineering offer unprecedented opportunities to…
Enzymes are on the front lines of evolution. All living organisms rely on highly efficient, specific enzymes for growth, sustenance, and reproduction; and many diseases are a consequence of a mutation on an enzyme that affects its catalytic…
The built environment provides an excellent setting for interdisciplinary research on the dynamics of microbial communities. The system is simplified compared to many natural settings, and to some extent the entire environment can be…
Darwin's hypothesis that all extant life forms are descendants of a last common ancestor cell and diversification of life forms results from gradual mutation plus natural selection represents a mainstream view that has influenced biology…
The evolution of different forms of photosynthetic life has profoundly altered the activity level of the biosphere, radically reshaping the composition of Earth's oceans and atmosphere over time. However, the mechanistic impacts of a…
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…
The search for biosignatures necessitates developing our understanding of life under different conditions. If life can influence the climate evolution of its planet then understanding the behaviour of life-climate feedbacks under extreme…
This paper explores the idea that information is an essential and distinctive feature of living systems. Unlike non-living systems, living systems actively acquire, process, and use information about their environments to respond to…
The driving force behind the origin and evolution of life has been the thermodynamic imperative of increasing the entropy production of the biosphere through increasing the global solar photon dissipation rate. In the upper atmosphere of…
Microbial ecosystems are commonly modeled by fixed interactions between species in steady exponential growth states. However, microbes often modify their environments so strongly that they are forced out of the exponential state into…
Thousands of exoplanets orbit nearby stars, showcasing a remarkable diversity in mass, size, and orbits. With the James Webb Space Telescope now operational, we are observing exoplanet atmospheres and aiming to reach down to small,…
A celebrated and controversial hypothesis conjectures that some biological systems --parts, aspects, or groups of them-- may extract important functional benefits from operating at the edge of instability, halfway between order and…
Many mechanisms, functions and structures of life have been unraveled. However, the fundamental driving force that propelled chemical evolution and led to life has remained obscure. The 2nd law of thermodynamics, written as an equation of…
We review the thermal history of the Universe. We obtain a new estimate for the thermal history of the Earth over the past four billion years using a biological thermometer based on (1) a rough estimate of the absolute time calibration of…
The formation of life is an automatic stage in the consolidation of rocky or "terrestrial" planets. The organic (=carbonaceous) matter, light elements, gases, and water must "float" toward the surface and the heavier metals must sink toward…
Life appears to have emerged relatively quickly on the Earth, a fact sometimes used to justify a high rate of spontaneous abiogenesis ($\lambda$) among Earth-like worlds. Conditioned upon a single datum - the time of earliest evidence for…
Biological and social systems are structured at multiple scales, and the incentives of individuals who interact in a group may diverge from the collective incentive of the group as a whole. Mechanisms to resolve this tension are responsible…