24 papers · ranked by Valyu relevance
Charles D. Kocher, Ken A. Dill
The origin of life must have been preceded by Darwin-like evolutionary dynamics that could propagate it. How did that adaptive dynamics arise? And from what prebiotic molecules? Using evolutionary invasion analysis, we develop a universal framework for describing any origin story for evolutionary dynamics. We find that…
András Szilágyi, István Zachar, István Scheuring, Ádám Kun + 2 more
'Balázs Könnyű' 'Tamás Czárán'] As of today, the most credible scientific paradigm pertaining to the origin of life on Earth is undoubtedly the RNA World scenario. It is built on the assumption that catalytically active replicators (most probably RNA-like macromolecules) may have been responsible for booting up life…
Marc Tessera
Background This essay highlights critical aspects of the plausibility of pre-Darwinian evolution. It is based on a critical review of some better-known open, far-from-equilibrium system-based scenarios supposed to explain processes that took place before Darwinian evolution had emerged and that resulted in the origin…
Charles D. Kocher, Ken A. Dill
The origin of life must have been preceded by Darwin-like evolutionary dynamics that could propagate it. How did that adaptive dynamics arise? And from what prebiotic molecules? Using evolutionary invasion analysis, we develop a universal framework for describing any origin story for evolutionary dynamics. We find that…
Arturo Tozzi
The origin of life is a complex scientific problem demanding interdisciplinary approaches. We propose a Linear Logic (LL)-based computational framework to formally evaluate the feasibility of early biochemical pathways across competing abiogenesis scenarios. Unlike classical logic, LL explicitly tracks resource…
Dirson Jian Li
The post-genomic era has brought opportunities to bridge traditionally separate fields of early history of life and brought new insight into origin and evolution of biodiversity. According to distributions of codons in genome sequences, I found a relationship between the genetic code and the tree of life. This remote…
Gregory P. Fournier
Abiogenesis is frequently envisioned as a linear, ladder-like progression of increasingly complex chemical systems, eventually leading to the ancestors of extant cellular life. This “pre-cladistics” view is in stark contrast to the well-accepted principles of organismal evolutionary biology, as informed by paleontology…
Sara Imari Walker, Martha A. Grover, Nicholas V. Hud
Many models for the origin of life have focused on understanding how evolution can drive the refinement of a preexisting enzyme, such as the evolution of efficient replicase activity. Here we present a model for what was, arguably, an even earlier stage of chemical evolution, when polymer sequence diversity was…
Ludo L. J. Schoenmakers, Thomas A. C. Reydon, Andreas Kirschning, Tony Z. Jia + 3 more
'Tony Z. Jia' 'Kuhan Chandru' 'Paul Higgs' 'Addy Pross'] The role of evolutionary theory at the origin of life is an extensively debated topic. The origin and early development of life is usually separated into a prebiotic phase and a protocellular phase, ultimately leading to the Last Universal Common Ancestor. Most…
François Papale, Kulish Yuri, Joseph P Bielawski, Louis-Patrick Haraoui
Conceptual analysis has, in the past decades, established that evolution by natural selection (ENS) can occur without reproduction (1–6). This theoretical advancement has significant imports for research on the origins of life that have yet to be explored. In this paper, we introduce and defend a niche…
Dongxu Zhao, Yu Yang, Jian Sun, Jinfeng Zhang + 3 more
Although the “RNA world” hypothesis suggests that RNA played a crucial role in the origin of life [7], the functional framework of RNA in prebiotic protein synthesis and the mechanisms of genetic code formation during the prebiotic period remain poorly understood. Here, using the prebiotic “primordial soup” as a model…
Amit Kahana, Lior Segev, Doron Lancet
The origin of life must have involved an unlikely transition from chaotic chemistry to reproducing supramolecular structures. Previous quantitative analyses of reproducing mutually catalytic networks made of simple molecules have led to increasing popularity of this pre-RNA scenario for life’s origin. Here, we…
Angad Yuvraj Singh, Sanjay Kumar Jain
We present a simple mathematical model that captures the evolutionary capabilities of a prebiotic compartment or protocell. In the model the protocell contains an autocatalytic set whose chemical dynamics is coupled to the growth-division dynamics of the compartment. Bistability in the dynamics of the autocatalytic set…
Vladimir Kompanichenko, Oleg Kotsyurbenko, Paul Higgs
The article shows the compatibility of the concept of thermodynamic inversion (TI) of the origin of life with the theory of stress in (micro)biology. According to the proposed TI concept, the first microorganisms on Earth were formed through an effective (intensified and purposeful) response of organic microsystems to…
David M. Fialho, Suneesh C. Karunakaran, Katherine W. Greeson, Isaac Martínez + 3 more
The mechanism by which genetic polymers spontaneously formed on the early Earth is currently unknown. The RNA World hypothesis implies that RNA oligomers were produced prebiotically, but the demonstration of this process has proven challenging. Alternatively, RNA may be the product of evolution and some, or all, of its…
Yoshiharu Mukouyama, Kenya Tanaka, Shuji Nakanishi, Yoshihiro Nakato
The emergence of life on Earth has attracted intense attention but remains unclear. A key problem is that the question of how living organisms can exhibit self-organizing ability that leads to highly ordered structures and active free independent behavior remains unanswered. This work reveals, by computer simulation…
Oliver R. Maguire, Iris B. A. Smokers, Bob G. Oosterom, Alla Zheliezniak + 1 more
Biochemistry is dependent upon enzyme catalysts accelerating key reactions. At the origin of life, prebiotic chemistry must have incorporated catalytic reactions. Whilst this would have yielded much needed amplification of certain reaction products, it would come at the possible cost of rapidly depleting the high…
Maaia Aleksandrova, Fidan Rahmatova, David A. Russell, Claudia Bonfio
Phospholipids are the primary constituents of cell membranes across all domains of life, but how and when phospholipids appeared on early Earth remains unknown. Previously described prebiotic pathways leading to complex phospholipids relied upon preexisting substrates, the availability of which on early Earth has yet…
Yoshiharu Mukouyama, Kenya Tanaka, Shuji Nakanishi, Yoshihiro Nakato
The present work reveals that a prebiotic chemical system can generate self-organizing ability that leads to highly ordered structures and an active character such as free independent harmonious behavior. This result is the properties of natural things that have long been overlooked since Darwin’s theory of evolution…
Authors not listed
Origin of Life research is a fast growing field of study with each year bringing new breakthroughs. Recent discoveries include novel syntheses of life's building blocks, mechanisms of activation and interaction between molecules, and newly identified environments that provide promising conditions for these syntheses…
Authors not listed
The reverse/reductive tricarboxylic acid (rTCA) cycle is a metabolic pathway that facilitates CO2 fixation in certain anaerobic bacteria and archaea. Its presence in phylogenetically ancient organisms has led to hypotheses about its role in the early evolution of CO2 fixation pathways. While the thermodynamics of the…
V. P. Novikov
The original hypothesis about Three-stage origin of life (TOL) on the Earth is developed and discussed. The role of the temperature factor in life origin is considered. It is supposed, that three stages of abiogenesis (DNA world, RNA world and the Protein world) consistently followed each other during Darwinian…
Tomislav Stolar, Ben K. D. Pearce, Martin Etter, Khai-Nghi Truong + 8 more
The information molecule of the first life on Earth is presumably ribonucleic acid (RNA). RNA is a polymer built out of four canonical nucleobases: adenine (A), uracil (U), guanine (G), and cytosine (C). However, it remains unclear how canonical nucleobases got selected from the hundreds available in nature. Here, we…
Julian Z. Xue, Leonid Chindelevich, Frédéric Guichard
Many well-documented macro-evolutionary phenomena, such as increases in organization hierarchy, or sudden and episodic creation of new taxa, still challenge current evolutionary theories. Here we show a new mechanism that can explain them. We begin by showing how the order of mutations can alter evolutionary…