Article
Physics, Fluids & Plasmas
Yasuji Sawada, Yasukazu Daigaku, Kenji Toma
Summary: Self-replicability is a unique attribute observed in all living organisms, and the question of how the life was physically initiated could be equivalent to the question of how self-replicating informative polymers were formed in the abiotic material world. It has been suggested that the present DNA and proteins world was preceded by an RNA world in which genetic information of RNA molecules was replicated by the mutual catalytic function of RNA molecules. However, the important question of how the transition occurred from a material world to the very early pre-RNA world remains unsolved both experimentally and theoretically. We present an onset model of mutually catalytic self-replicative systems formed in an assembly of polynucleotides. A quantitative expression of the critical condition for the onset of growing fluctuation towards self-replication in this model is obtained by analytical and numerical calculations.
Article
Ecology
Daniel Pincheira-Donoso, Lilly P. Harvey, Florencia Grattarola, Manuel Jara, Sheena C. Cotter, Tom Tregenza, Dave J. Hodgson
Summary: Body size is a crucial factor that impacts fitness within animal populations, with ecological and reproductive pressures driving the evolution of sexual size dimorphism (SSD). Various hypotheses have been proposed to explain the diversity of SSD across species, focusing on mate competition, fecundity benefits, niche divergence, and geographical variation. A global-scale study on amphibians reveals that SSD evolution differs between anurans and salamanders, with anuran SSD influenced by climate and nesting site, while salamander SSD is consistent across species occupying similar microhabitats. Ecological and climatic pressures play a key role in driving amphibian SSD, with no significant effects from sexual or fecundity selection detected.
GLOBAL ECOLOGY AND BIOGEOGRAPHY
(2021)
Review
Biology
Lena Vincent, Stephanie Colon-Santos, H. James Cleaves II, David A. Baum, Sarah E. Maurer
Summary: This paper discusses principles for selecting chemical mixtures for prebiotic chemistry experiments, reviews natural environmental conditions that may have created such mixtures, and suggests reasonable guidelines for designing recipes. It explores assembled and synthesized mixtures, and addresses practical concerns such as balancing prebiotically realistic mixtures with experimental tractability. The development of standardized prebiotic recipes and a public prebiotic chemistry database are advocated to facilitate coordination among researchers and identify promising mechanisms in the origin of life.
Review
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Stephen D. Fried, Kosuke Fujishima, Mikhail Makarov, Ivan Cherepashuk, Klara Hlouchova
Summary: This article discusses the importance of peptides in the research of the origins of life, suggesting that early peptides played various central prebiotic roles before polynucleotides, including catalysis, compartmentalization, and structural hubs. The early evolution of proteins has also left traces on the unique properties of extant proteins.
JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY INTERFACE
(2022)
Article
Physics, Multidisciplinary
Karo Michaelian
Summary: Evolutionary theory suggests that biology evolves through natural selection, but lacks physical foundation and is plagued with problems and paradoxes. On the other hand, non-equilibrium thermodynamic theory provides a physical foundation for describing the interaction of material with its environment and explains the selection of characteristics based on increases in the global rate of dissipation. This theory describes different mechanisms of selection at various levels, from molecular to biosphere.
Article
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Aayush Arya, Jessica Ray, Siddhant Sharma, Romulo Cruz Simbron, Alejandro Lozano, Harrison B. Smith, Jakob Lykke Andersen, Huan Chen, Markus Meringer, Henderson James Cleaves
Summary: The study focuses on a central question in the origins of life research, investigating the connection between non-entailed chemical processes and highly entailed ones. By developing an open-source chemoinformatic workflow, the researchers aim to model abiological chemistry and discover the entailment. The workflow automates the generation and analysis of chemical reaction networks and can help identify autocatalysis and potential self-organization in complex chemical systems.
Article
Biology
Robert Root-Bernstein, Adam W. Brown
Summary: Origin-of-life chemical experiments aim to produce specific chemical products and simulate natural selection processes. Researchers have modified the experiments by incorporating multiple natural selection factors, allowing for long-term chemical synthesis and selection to explore the evolution of chemical ecosystems.
Article
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Huacan Lin, Eddy I. Jimenez, Joshua T. Arriola, Ulrich F. Muller, Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy
Summary: The study demonstrates a new method for the conversion from nucleoside-monophosphates to nucleoside triphosphates, showing that this conversion can occur in a biological context. This approach facilitates a more continuous transition from prebiotic phosphorylation and oligomerization to enzyme-driven polymerization.
ANGEWANDTE CHEMIE-INTERNATIONAL EDITION
(2022)
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Felix Broecker
Summary: The author proposes that the evolutionary origin of the genome was a multi-ribozyme RNA, likely evolving within liposomes in dry-wet cycling environments. The protogenome linked the information required for protometabolism in newly forming protocells, and could have evolved into a DNA genome with increased stability and storage capacity. Experimental suggestions include testing the ability of ribozyme RNA polymerases to generate random ligation products and testing the catalytic activity of linked ribozyme domains.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR SCIENCES
(2021)
Article
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Meirong Cui, Dan Zhang, Qingfu Wang, Jie Chao
Summary: DNAzymes hold great promise as transducing agents for the analysis of intracellular biomarkers. However, their low delivery efficiency and limited signal amplification capability hinder their application in low-abundance biomarker analysis. In this study, a general strategy to design an intelligent, autocatalytic DNAzyme biocircuit is developed for amplified microRNA imaging in living cells. The DNAzyme biocircuit is constructed based on a nanodevice composed of catalytic hairpin assembly (CHA) and DNAzyme biocatalytic functional units, sustained by Au nanoparticles (AuNPs) and MnO2 nanosheets (CD/AM nanodevices). The intelligent autocatalytic multilayer DNAzyme biocircuit can effectively avoid signal leakage and obtain high amplification gain, expanding the application of programmable complex DNA nanocircuits in biosensing, nanomaterial assembly, and biomedicine.
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
S. Furkan Ozturk, Dimitar D. Sasselov
Summary: The origins of biological homochirality on early Earth are still unknown, but this study proposes a hypothesis regarding this phenomenon. The authors suggest that shallow closed-basin lakes on early Earth, which are expected to contain significant sedimentary magnetite deposits, could have been a plausible prebiotic environment. They hypothesize that ultraviolet (200-300 nm) irradiation of magnetite deposits could generate hydrated spin-polarized electrons that induce enantioselective prebiotic chemistry, thereby facilitating the synthesis of life's building blocks.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
(2022)
Article
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Felix Xu, Antony Crisp, Thea Schinkel, Romeo C. A. Dubini, Sarah Huebner, Sidney Becker, Florian Schelter, Petra Rovo, Thomas Carell
Summary: The study suggests that isoxazole nucleosides may be precursors of RNA, which is significant for understanding the evolutionary origin of RNA.
ANGEWANDTE CHEMIE-INTERNATIONAL EDITION
(2022)
Article
Biology
Alessandro Ravoni
Summary: Autocatalytic Sets are reaction networks theorized as the foundation of life, characterized by their ability to spontaneously emerge and self-reproduce. The Reflexively and Food-generated theory provides a formal definition of Autocatalytic Sets in terms of graphs with unique topological properties, which has been proven to be a powerful tool for studying the chemical networks underlying life. However, the dynamics of these networks have not been fully clarified yet.
JOURNAL OF THEORETICAL BIOLOGY
(2021)
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Bruno Cuevas-Zuviria, Zachary R. Adam, Aaron D. Goldman, Betul Kacar
Summary: The ability to convert genetic information into molecular function is a defining feature of life. The translation process converts nucleotide triplets in mRNA into specific amino acids that form a folded protein with molecular activities. The emergence of translation during early evolution may have allowed life to separate from its original setting.
JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR EVOLUTION
(2023)
Review
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Oleg I. Kolodiazhnyi
Summary: Organophosphorus compounds are essential components in biological processes, with synthetic compounds also having practical applications in various fields. Recent studies have focused on phosphorus compounds isolated from natural sources, many of which exhibit interesting biological properties. The study of natural organophosphorus compounds presents potential for the development of new biologically active compounds.
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Hemachander Subramanian, Robert A. Gatenby
JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR EVOLUTION
(2018)
Article
Biology
Hemachander Subramanian, Robert A. Gatenby
JOURNAL OF THEORETICAL BIOLOGY
(2018)
Article
Physics, Condensed Matter
Hemachander Subramanian, J. E. Han
JOURNAL OF PHYSICS-CONDENSED MATTER
(2013)
Article
Materials Science, Multidisciplinary
Hemachander Subramanian, J. E. Han
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Hemachander Subramanian, Robert A. Gatenby
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
(2020)
Article
Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence
S. Hemachander, A. Verma, S. Arora, Prasanta K. Panigrahi
PATTERN RECOGNITION LETTERS
(2007)