Related papers: Template coexistence in prebiotic vesicle models
The coexistence between different informational molecules has been the preferred mode to circumvent the limitation posed by imperfect replication on the amount of information stored by each of these molecules. Here we reexamine a classic…
Compartmentalization of self-replicating molecules (templates) in protocells is a necessary step towards the evolution of modern cells. However, coexistence between distinct template types inside a protocell can be achieved only if there is…
The coexistence between different types of templates has been the choice solution to the information crisis of prebiotic evolution, triggered by the finding that a single RNA-like template cannot carry enough information to code for any…
The compartmentalization of distinct templates in protocells and the exchange of templates between them (migration) are key elements of a modern scenario for prebiotic evolution. Here we use the diffusion approximation of population…
Hypercycles are information integration systems which are thought to overcome the information crisis of prebiotic evolution by ensuring the coexistence of several short templates. For imperfect template replication, we derive a simple…
We present an atomistic study of heterogeneous nucleation in Ni employing transition path sampling, which reveals a template precursor-mediated mechanism of crystallization. Most notably, we find that the ability of tiny templates to modify…
Ecological trade-offs between species are often invoked to explain species coexistence in ecological communities. However, few mathematical models have been proposed for which coexistence conditions can be characterized explicitly in terms…
A great number of biological organisms live in aqueous environments. Major evolutionary transitions, including the emergence of life itself, likely occurred in such environments. While the chemical aspects of the role of water in biology…
The production of sequence-specific copolymers using copolymer templates is fundamental to the synthesis of complex biological molecules and is a promising framework for the synthesis of synthetic chemical complexes. Unlike the…
This is the first of two papers where we discuss the limits imposed by competition to the biodiversity of species communities. In this first paper we study the coexistence of competing species at the fixed point of population dynamic…
Local coexistence of species in large ecosystems is traditionally explained within the broad framework of niche theory. However, its rationale hardly justifies rich biodiversity observed in nearly homogeneous environments. Here we consider…
Bacteria and their bacteriophages are the most abundant, widespread and diverse groups of biological entities on the planet. In an attempt to understand how the interactions between bacteria, virulent phages and temperate phages might…
A complex interplay between species governs the evolution of spatial patterns in ecology. An open problem in the biological sciences is characterising spatio-temporal data and understanding how changes at the local scale affect global…
Template directed replication of nucleic acids is at the essence of all living beings and a major milestone for any origin of life scenario. We here present an idealized model of prebiotic sequence replication, where binary polymers act as…
The monomer surface mobility is the single most important parameter that decides the nucleation density and morphology of islands during thin film growth. During template-assisted surface growth in particular, low surface mobilities can…
Understanding the mechanisms of species coexistence has always been a fundamental topic in ecology. Classical theory predicts that interspecific competition may select for traits that stabilize niche differences, although recent work shows…
This is the second of two papers dedicated to the relationship between population models of competition and biodiversity. Here we consider species assembly models where the population dynamics is kept far from fixed points through the…
In food webs, many interacting species coexist despite the restrictions imposed by the competitive exclusion principle and apparent competition. For the generalized Lotka-Volterra equations, sustainable coexistence necessitates nonzero…
In this paper, we discuss the conceptual underpinnings of Modern Coexistence Theory (MCT), a quantitative framework for understanding ecological coexistence. In order to use MCT to infer how species are coexisting, one must relate a complex…
We explore the use of templated self-assembly to facilitate the formation of complex target structures made from patchy particles. First, we consider the templating of high-symmetry shell structures around a spherical core particle. We find…