相关论文: A Modular 3D-Printed Design to Investigate Prebiot…
The growth, form, and division of prebiotic vesicles, membraneous bags of fluid of varying components and shapes is hypothesized to have served as the substrate for the origin of life. The dynamics of these out-of-equilibrium structures is…
Cross-reactions and other systematic issues generated by the coupling of functional chemical subsystems pose the largest challenge for assembling a viable protocell in the laboratory. Our current work seeks to identify and clarify such key…
The building of minimal self-reproducing systems with a physical embodiment (generically called protocells) is a great challenge, with implications for both theory and applied sciences. Although the classical view of a living protocell…
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…
There are two dominant and contrasting classes of origin of life scenarios: those predicting that life emerged in submarine hydrothermal systems, where chemical disequilibrium can provide an energy source for nascent life; and those…
Engineering simple, artificial models of living cells allows synthetic biologists to study cellular functions under well-controlled conditions. Reconstituting multicellular behaviors with synthetic cell-mimics is still a challenge because…
Previous studies modelled the origin of life and the emergence of photosynthesis on the early Earth-i.e. the origin of plants-in terms of biological heat engines that worked on thermal cycling caused by suspension in convecting water. In…
Cellular life requires the presence of a set of biochemical mechanisms in order to maintain a predictable process of growth and division. Several attempts have been made towards the building of minimal protocells from a top-down approach,…
In addressing the origins of Darwinian evolution, recent experimental work has been focussed on the discovery of simple physical effects which would provide a relevant selective advantage to protocells competing with each other for a…
Biological cells utilize membranes and liquid-like droplets, known as biomolecular condensates, to structure their interior. The interaction of droplets and membranes, despite being involved in several key biological processes, is so far…
Hot molecular cores (HMCs) are intermediate stages of high-mass star formation and are also known for their rich emission line spectra at (sub-)mm wavebands. The observed spectral feature of HMCs such as total number of emission lines and…
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 emergence of the main divisions of today's life: (1) unicellular prokaryotes, (2) unicellular eukaryotes, (3) multicellular eukaryotes, and (4) metazoans, are examples of the--still unexplained--major transitions in evolution. Regarding…
We develop a multi-scale approach to simulate hydrated nanobio systems under realistic condi- tions (e.g., nanoparticles and protein solutions at physiological conditions over time-scales up to hours). We combine atomistic simulations of…
It has been proposed that during the early steps in the origin of life, small droplets could have formed via the segregation of molecules from complex mixtures by phase separation. These droplets could have provided chemical reaction…
Protocells are supposed to have played a key role in the self-organizing processes leading to the emergence of life. Existing models either (i) describe protocell architecture and dynamics, given the existence of sets of collectively…
A mystery about the origins of life is which molecular structures $-$ and what spontaneous processes $-$ drove the autocatalytic transition from simple chemistry to biology? Using the HP lattice model of polymer sequence spaces leads to the…
A full-dimensional molecular model of water, HBB2-pol, derived entirely from first principles, is introduced and employed in computer simulations ranging from the dimer to the liquid. HBB2-pol provides excellent agreement with the measured…
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…
Membrane phase-separation is a mechanism that biological membranes often use to locally concentrate specific lipid species in order to organize diverse membrane processes. Phase separation has also been explored as a tool for the design of…