Related papers: Evolution of protein$-$RNA interactions
Evolution of life on earth was governed, primarily, by natural selection, with major contribution of other evolutionary processes, such as neutral variation, exaptation, and gene duplication. However, for biological evolution to take off, a…
Regulatory networks consist of interacting molecules with a high degree of mutual chemical specificity. How can these molecules evolve when their function depends on maintenance of interactions with cognate partners and simultaneous…
Proteins, essential to biological systems, perform functions intricately linked to their three-dimensional structures. Understanding the relationship between protein structures and their amino acid sequences remains a core challenge in…
The thermosynthesis concept, biological free energy gain from thermal cycling, is combined with the concept of the RNA World. The resulting overall origin of life model gives new explanations for the emergence of the genetic code and the…
An extrapolation of the genetic complexity of organisms to earlier times suggests that life began before the Earth was formed. Life may have started from systems with single heritable elements that are functionally equivalent to a…
We introduce a simple "patchy particle" model to study the thermodynamics and dynamics of self-assembly of homomeric protein complexes. Our calculations allow us to rationalize recent results for dihedral complexes. Namely, why evolution of…
The path toward the emergence of life in our biosphere involved several key events allowing for the persistence, reproduction and evolution of molecular systems. All these processes took place in a given environmental context and required…
We propose a scenario for the origin of life based on the coevolution of lipid bilayer vesicles and protein channels.
There is an intrinsic relationship between the molecular evolution in primordial period and the properties of genomes and proteomes of contemporary species. The genomic data may help us understand the driving force of evolution of life at…
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 emergence of self-replication and information transmission in life's origin remains unexplained despite extensive research on the topic. A hypothesis explaining the transition from a simple organic world to a complex RNA world is…
Cellular functions are based on the complex interplay of proteins, therefore the structure and dynamics of these protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks are the key to the functional understanding of cells. In the last years, large-scale…
Although both RNA and proteins have densely packed native structures, chain organizations of these two biopolymers are fundamentally different. Motivated by the recent discoveries in chromatin folding that interphase chromosomes have…
A great variety of molecular components is encapsulated in cells. Each of these components is replicated for cell reproduction. To address an essential role of the huge diversity of cellular components, we study a model of protocells that…
One of the proposed scenarios for the origin of life is the primordial RNA world, which considers that RNA molecules were likely responsible for the storage of genetic information and the catalysis of biochemical reactions in primitive…
Prebiotic molecules, fundamental building blocks for the origin of life, have been found in carbonaceous chondrites. The exogenous delivery of these organic molecules onto the Hadean Earth could have sparked the polymerization of the first…
The intricate network of interactions observed in RNA three-dimensional structures is often described in terms of a multitude of geometrical properties, including helical parameters, base pairing/stacking, hydrogen bonding and backbone…
Binding interactions between proteins and other molecules mediate numerous cellular processes, including metabolism, signaling, and regulation of gene expression. These interactions evolve in response to changes in the protein's chemical or…
The origins of planets, and perhaps life itself, is intrinsically linked to the chemistry of planet formation. In this chapter we will attempt to explore the chemistry of planet-forming disks from the perspective of knowledge gained from…
Related groups of microbes are widely distributed across Earth's habitats, implying numerous dispersal and adaptation events over evolutionary time. However, to date, relatively little is known about the characteristics and mechanisms of…