Adding to Hans Kuhn's thesis on the emergence of the genetic apparatus: Of the Darwinian advantage to be neither too soluble, nor too insoluble, neither too solid, nor completely liquid

Strazewski, Peter

doi:10.1016/j.colsurfb.2009.07.001

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 33 publications

(21 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This assumption is experimentally supported, indicating that particular conditions at a particular location are required in a prebiotic synthesis of nucleotides (see section 1.2). Peter Strazewski [23] supports this by demonstrating the great importance to search for precise and particular conditions that allow oligonucleotides to concentrate from high dilution onto a two-dimensional interface. Among a great number of oligonucleotides an oligo-nucleotide may occur by chance that is replicable and multiplies initiating a Darwinian behavior.…”

Section: Theory: Postulates and Logical Consequencesmentioning

confidence: 94%

Is the transition from chemistry to biology a mystery?

Kuhn

2010

J Syst Chem

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Today most chemists think that the answer to how life on earth emerged is still unknown. They assume a gap between chemistry and biology that is still unbridged. For chemists, understanding the origin of life requires the experimental modeling of a process that bridges this gap. They will not consider the problem solved before they are able to perform such tasks. No gap appears when we are pursuing a less ambitious goal, namely, to present a sequence of hypothetical processes that lead to an apparatus with the basic structure and fundamental feature of the genetic apparatus of biosystems but strongly simplified. The modeled apparatus has the basic machinery of living entities. Its fundamental feature is Darwinian behavior. Living individuals have the power to evolve toward ever increasing complexity and intricacy if appropriate conditions are given. The task to understand life's origin as a rational process is closely related to the earlier attempts of the present author to design and construct supra-molecular machines. The skill of the experimentalist has to be replaced by the presence of very particular conditions given by chance in a very particular location. The resulting apparatus has a distinct basic structure and function.The essence of what happens is inevitable, not accidental. Thus the emergence of life is assumed to be described by a distinct theory. Today's great challenge is experimentally investigating chemical systems with the goal of creating artificial chemical life and the given theory provides a powerful stimulus. Life, from the perspective of physics, is the living state of matter and this view calls for a theory describing the fundamental requirements for the appearance of such a living state of matter (on the early earth and in the universe). The approach given here is an attempt in this direction. According to that approach the appearance of an entity with Darwinian behavior is instantaneous and linked with the creation of matter that carries information. Thus, Information (measured in bits according to Shannon) takes a meaning with that instant, the appearance of the first entity that evolves by multiplication, variation, selection and keeps that meaning during the entire evolution of the living (Information carrying) state of matter. Another consequence of this initial event is a spontaneous symmetry breaking due to the equal probabilities that the oligomer starting the process is right handed or left handed.

show abstract

Section: Theory: Postulates and Logical Consequencesmentioning

confidence: 94%

Is the transition from chemistry to biology a mystery?

Kuhn

2010

J Syst Chem

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Both are the polymerisation products of their respective “monomers”, the amino acids and the nucleoside monophosphates. Hence, finding a de novo genetic code may be reduced to the “reinvention” of the mutual control of both polymer kinds over the assembly of the monomers of the other kind 6b,c. RNAs need to be synthesised by RNA “proto‐polymerases” from RNA template strands, RNA primers, and RNA monomers.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Omne Vivum Ex Vivo … Omne? How to Feed an Inanimate Evolvable Chemical System so as to Let it Self‐evolve into Increased Complexity and Life‐like Behaviour

Strazewski

2015

Israel Journal of Chemistry

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“What I cannot create, I do not understand.” Richard Feynman’s bon mot seems almost tailored for experimental systems chemists to realise an important step in the chemical sciences: the creation of living synthetic cells from the entirely inanimate. The underlying idea needs to be simple so the system can develop naturally. This proposal aims at the realisation, viz. finding sets of experimentally feasible initial conditions, exploring varied compositions and analysing their outcomes, of a fully synthetic chemical micro‐compartmented and evolvable macromolecular system being fed with monomers and small molecular weight, high energy compounds, to keep the system permanently out of thermodynamic equilibrium and let it self‐evolve, thus gaining: 1) import‐export control of macromolecules across the compartment membranes; 2) food‐dependent increase in macromolecular size, i.e., polymer length inside the compartments; 3) sustained production of new macromolecules through the establishment of a (or several) de novo genetic code(s); leading to 4) the emergence of replicating macromolecular populations; and 5) the emergence of self‐evolved synthetic living cells.

show abstract

“…Such peptides would otherwise precipitate, be unable to grow further in size or exert hardly any catalytic activity on their surroundings. On the other hand, these lipophilic peptides could Life 2024, 14, 108 2 of 32 anchor to lipid membranes, thereby maintaining a high local concentration of covalently bound oligonucleotides in their vicinity [9]. Once present at or in the membranes, some of the chimeras could cross them and get inside the vesicles.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From the RNA-Peptide World: Prebiotic Reaction Conditions Compatible with Lipid Membranes for the Formation of Lipophilic Random Peptides in the Presence of Short Oligonucleotides, and More

Lopez,

Vauchez,

Ajram

et al. 2024

Life

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Deciphering the origins of life on a molecular level includes unravelling the numerous interactions that could occur between the most important biomolecules being the lipids, peptides and nucleotides. They were likely all present on the early Earth and all necessary for the emergence of cellular life. In this study, we intended to explore conditions that were at the same time conducive to chemical reactions critical for the origins of life (peptide–oligonucleotide couplings and templated ligation of oligonucleotides) and compatible with the presence of prebiotic lipid vesicles. For that, random peptides were generated from activated amino acids and analysed using NMR and MS, whereas short oligonucleotides were produced through solid-support synthesis, manually deprotected and purified using HPLC. After chemical activation in prebiotic conditions, the resulting mixtures were analysed using LC-MS. Vesicles could be produced through gentle hydration in similar conditions and observed using epifluorescence microscopy. Despite the absence of coupling or ligation, our results help to pave the way for future investigations on the origins of life that may gather all three types of biomolecules rather than studying them separately, as it is still too often the case.

show abstract

Adding to Hans Kuhn's thesis on the emergence of the genetic apparatus: Of the Darwinian advantage to be neither too soluble, nor too insoluble, neither too solid, nor completely liquid

Cited by 8 publications

References 33 publications

Is the transition from chemistry to biology a mystery?

Is the transition from chemistry to biology a mystery?

Omne Vivum Ex Vivo … Omne? How to Feed an Inanimate Evolvable Chemical System so as to Let it Self‐evolve into Increased Complexity and Life‐like Behaviour

From the RNA-Peptide World: Prebiotic Reaction Conditions Compatible with Lipid Membranes for the Formation of Lipophilic Random Peptides in the Presence of Short Oligonucleotides, and More

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About