Assembling non-biological materials (geomaterials) into a proto-organism constitutes a bridge between nonliving and living matter. In this article we present a simple step-by-step route to assemble a proto-organism. Many pictures have been proposed to describe this transition within the origins-of-life and artificial life communities, and more recently alternative pictures have been emerging from advances in nanoscience and biotechnology. The proposed proto-organism lends itself to both traditions and defines a new picture based on a simple idea: Given a set of required functionalities, minimize the physicochemical structures that support these functionalities, and make sure that all structures self-assemble and mutually enhance each other's existence. The result is the first concrete, rational design of a simple physicochemical system that integrates the key functionalities in a thermodynamically favorable manner as a lipid aggregate integrates proto-genes and a proto-metabolism. Under external pumping of free energy, the metabolic processes produce the required building blocks, and only specific gene sequences enhance the metabolic kinetics sufficiently for the whole system to survive. We propose an experimental implementation of the proto-organism with a discussion of our experimental results, together with relevant results produced by other experimental groups, and we specify what is still missing experimentally. Identifying the missing steps is just as important as providing the road map for the transition. We derive the kinetic and thermodynamic conditions of each of the proto-organism subsystems together with relevant theoretical and computational results about these subsystems. We present and discuss detailed 3D simulations of the lipid aggregation processes. From the reaction kinetics we derive analytical aggregate size distributions, and derive key properties of the metabolic efficiency and stability. Thermodynamics and kinetics of the ligation directed self-replication of the proto-genes is discussed, and we summarize the full life cycle of the proto-organism by comparing size, replication time, and energy with the biomass efficiency of contemporary unicells. Finally, we also compare our proto-organism picture with existing origins-of-life and protocell pictures. By assembling one possible bridge between nonliving and living matter we hope to provide a piece in the ancient puzzle about who we are and where we come from.

Abstract. We propose a definition of QNC, the quantum analog of the efficient parallel class NC. We exhibit several useful gadgets and prove that various classes of circuits can be parallelized to logarithmic depth, including circuits for encoding and decoding standard quantum errorcorrecting codes, or more generally any circuit consisting of controllednot gates, controlled π-shifts, and Hadamard gates. Finally, while we note the Quantum Fourier Transform can be parallelized to linear depth, we conjecture that an even simpler 'staircase' circuit cannot be parallelized to less than linear depth, and might be used to prove that QNC < QP.

We carried out targeted sequencing of BRCA1/2 in an unselected cohort of patients diagnosed with primary breast cancer within a population without strong founder mutations. Eleven percent of cases harbored a germline or somatic BRCA1/2 mutation, and the ratio of germline versus somatic mutation was 2 : 1. This has implications for treatment, genetic counseling, and interpretation of tumor-only testing.

The conduction mechanism in microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) tablets at varying relative humidity (RH) has been investigated by using the techniques of low frequency dielectric spectroscopy and transient current analysis at room temperature. The dependence on RH on the measured conductivity and charge carrier density indicates that a high-power-law-exponent percolation process of cations being conducted on water molecules occupying available 6-OH units on the cellulose chains is the dominating dc conduction mechanism at RH below 3 wt % of moisture content. The experimentally observed decrease in charge carrier mobility with increasing moisture content shows that protons and H3O+ ions that are being blocked at empty 6-OH sites also contribute to the charge transport process in cellulose at low moisture contents.

The stability and conservation properties of a recently proposed polymerization model are studied. The achiral (racemic) solution is linearly unstable once the relevant control parameter (here the fidelity of the catalyst) exceeds a critical value. The growth rate is calculated for different fidelity parameters and cross-inhibition rates. A chirality parameter is defined and shown to be conserved by the nonlinear terms of the model. Finally, a truncated version of the model is used to derive a set of two ordinary differential equations and it is argued that these equations are more realistic than those used in earlier models of that form.