Related papers: Coevolution of membranes and channels: A possible …
The origin of life occupies a very important place in the study of the evolution. Its liminal location between life and non-life poses special challenges to researchers who study this subject. Current approaches in studying the origin and…
A recent study reported that there is evidence life may have originated prior to the formation of the Earth. That conclusion was based on a regression analysis of a certain data set involving evolution of functional genome size across major…
Cellular membranes are elastic lipid bilayers that contain a variety of proteins, including ion channels, receptors, and scaffolding proteins. These proteins are known to diffuse in the plane of the membrane and to influence the bending of…
It is not currently possible to create a living organism ab initio due to the overwhelming complexity of biological systems. In fact, the origin of life mechanism, this being how biological organisms form from non-living matter, is unknown.…
The post-genomic era has brought opportunities to bridge traditionally separate fields of early history of life and brought new insight into origin and evolution of biodiversity. According to distributions of codons in genome sequences, I…
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…
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…
Membrane organization is essential for cellular functions such as signal transduction and membrane trafficking. A major challenge is to understand the lateral heterogeneous structures in membranes and membrane fluidity in the presence of…
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…
Biological membranes mainly consist of lipids and proteins. While the proteins have many functions as single molecules, the membrane as a whole displays physical properties that cannot be explained on the single molecule level. For example,…
The origin of life on Earth via the spontaneous emergence of a protocell prior to Darwinian evolution remains a fundamental open question in physics and chemistry. Here, we develop a conceptual framework based on information theory and…
Excitability is an attribute of life, and is a driving force in the descent of complexity. Cellular electrical activity as realized by membrane proteins that act as either channels or transporters is the basis of excitability. Electrical…
The aim of this essay is to analyze the role of quantum mechanics as an inherent characteristic of life. During the last ten years the problem of the origin of life has become an innovative research subject approached by many authors. The…
The emergence of membranous compartments (protocells) with encapsulated genetic material was a crucial step life's origin and evolution. The hot spring hypothesis for the origin of life suggests that protocells could have formed in hot…
The origin of life required the emergence of metabolism, an autocatalytic network of enzymatic reactions that synthesize amino acids, nucleotides and cofactors. At the origin of metabolism there were no enzymes--how did it start? Empirical…
Any search for present or past life beyond Earth should consider the initial processes and related environmental controls that might have led to its start. As on Earth, such an understanding lies well beyond how simple organic molecules…
One of the longest standing open problems in science is how life arises from non-living matter. If it is possible to measure this transition in the lab, then it might be possible to understand the physical mechanisms by which the emergence…
Water molecules play an important role in providing unique environments for biological reactions on cell membranes. It is widely believed that water molecules form bridges that connect lipid molecules and stabilize cell membranes. Using…
The emergence of biomolecular homochirality is a critically important question about life phenomenon and the origins of life. In a previous paper (arXiv:1309.1229), I tentatively put forward a new hypothesis that the emergence of a single…
A central and long-standing issue in evolutionary theory is the origin of the biological variation upon which natural selection acts1. Some hypotheses suggest that evolutionary change represents an adaptation to the surrounding environment…