Spontaneous emergence of autocatalytic information-coding polymers
- Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
- Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States); Univ. of Illinois, Champaign, IL (United States)
Self-replicating systems based on information-coding polymers are of crucial importance in biology. They also recently emerged as a paradigm in material design on nano- and micro-scales. We present a general theoretical and numerical analysis of the problem of spontaneous emergence of autocatalysis for heteropolymers capable of template-assisted ligation driven by cyclic changes in the environment. Our central result is the existence of the first order transition between the regime dominated by free monomers and that with a self-sustaining population of sufficiently long chains. We provide a simple, mathematically tractable model supported by numerical simulations, which predicts the distribution of chain lengths and the onset of autocatalysis in terms of the overall monomer concentration and two fundamental rate constants. Another key result of our study is the emergence of the kinetically limited optimal overlap length between a template and each of its two substrates. The template-assisted ligation allows for heritable transmission of the information encoded in chain sequences thus opening up the possibility of long-term memory and evolvability in such systems.
- Research Organization:
- Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- SC0012704; PM-031
- OSTI ID:
- 1213392
- Alternate ID(s):
- OSTI ID: 1228708
- Report Number(s):
- BNL-108290-2015-JA; JCPSA6; KC0403020; TRN: US1500647
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol. 143, Issue 4; ISSN 0021-9606
- Publisher:
- American Institute of Physics (AIP)Copyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Web of Science
Similar Records
Structured sequences emerge from random pool when replicated by templated ligation
Engineering Bioelectronic Signal Transduction Using the Bacterial Type III Secretion Apparatus