Spontaneous emergence of autocatalytic information-coding polymers

Tkachenko, Alexei V.; Maslov, Sergei

doi:10.1063/1.4922545

Title: Spontaneous emergence of autocatalytic information-coding polymers

Journal Article · Tue Jul 28 00:00:00 EDT 2015 · Journal of Chemical Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4922545· OSTI ID:1213392

Tkachenko, Alexei V. ^[1]; Maslov, Sergei ^[2]

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.

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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

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Cited by: 22 works

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Cooperative Ligation Breaks Sequence Symmetry and Stabilizes Early Molecular Replication Toyabe, Shoichi; Braun, Dieter Physical Review X, Vol. 9, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevx.9.011056	journal	March 2019
The Role of Templating in the Emergence of RNA from the Prebiotic Chemical Mixture Tupper, Andrew; Shi, Kevin; Higgs, Paul Life, Vol. 7, Issue 4 https://doi.org/10.3390/life7040041	journal	October 2017
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Survival of self-replicating molecules under transient compartmentalization with natural selection Laurent, Gabin; Peliti, Luca; Lacoste, David Life https://doi.org/10.1101/755355	posted_content	September 2019
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Reaction kinetics in open reactors and serial transfers between closed reactors Blokhuis, Alex; Lacoste, David; Gaspard, Pierre The Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol. 148, Issue 14 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5022697	journal	April 2018
Onset of natural selection in populations of autocatalytic heteropolymers Tkachenko, Alexei V.; Maslov, Sergei The Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol. 149, Issue 13 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5048488	journal	October 2018
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Achieving Selective Targeting Using Engineered Nanomaterials Lanfranco, Roberta; Mognetti, Bortolo M.; Bruylants, Gilles Series in BioEngineering https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0989-2_6	book	January 2019
Length and sequence relaxation of copolymers under recombination reactions Blokhuis, Alex; Lacoste, David The Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol. 147, Issue 9 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5001021	journal	September 2017

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