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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…
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…
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…
Mechanistic models can provide an intuitive and interpretable explanation of network growth by specifying a set of generative rules. These rules can be defined by domain knowledge about real-world mechanisms governing network growth or may…
The dominant paradigm in origin of life research is that of an RNA world. However, despite experimental progress towards the spontaneous formation of RNA, the RNA world hypothesis still has its problems. Here, we introduce a novel…
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…
Life can be viewed as a localized chemical system that sits on, or in the basin of attraction of, a metastable dynamical attractor state that remains out of equilibrium with the environment. Such a view of life allows that new living states…
Each living species carries a complex DNA sequence that determines their unique features and functionalities. It is generally assumed that life started from a random pool of oligonucleotides sequences, generated by a prebiotic…
Developing models with high interpretability and even deriving formulas to quantify relationships between biological data is an emerging need. We propose here a framework for ab initio derivation of sequence motifs and linear formula using…
This contribution focuses on the fascinating RNA molecule, its sequence-dependent folding driven by base-pairing interactions, the interplay between these interactions and natural evolution, and its multiple regulatory roles. The four of us…
A key step in the origin of life is the emergence of a primitive metabolism. This requires the formation of a subset of chemical reactions that is both self-sustaining and collectively autocatalytic. A generic theory to study such processes…
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…
The increasing importance of RNA as a prime player in biology can hardly be overstated. Problems in RNA, such as folding and RNA-RNA interactions that drive phase separation, require cations. Because experiments alone cannot reveal the…
The emergence of longer information-carrying and functional nucleotide polymers from random short strands was a major stepping stone at the dawn of life. But the formation of those polymers under temperature oscillation required some form…
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…
Chemical reaction networks in living cells maintain precise control over thousands of metabolites despite operating far from equilibrium under constant perturbations. While mass action kinetics accurately describe the underlying dynamics,…
Molecular dynamics is a valuable tool to probe biological processes at the atomistic level - a resolution often elusive to experiments. However, the credibility of molecular models is limited by the accuracy of the underlying force field,…
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…
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…
Implicit in the RNA world hypothesis is that prebiotic RNA synthesis, despite occurring in an environment without biochemical catalysts, produced the long RNA polymers which are essential to the formation of life. In order to investigate…