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Full-Text Articles in Genetics and Genomics
Prebiotic Rna Network Formation: A Taxonomy Of Molecular Cooperation, Cole Mathis, Sanjay N. Ramprasad, Sara Imari Walker, Niles Lehman
Prebiotic Rna Network Formation: A Taxonomy Of Molecular Cooperation, Cole Mathis, Sanjay N. Ramprasad, Sara Imari Walker, Niles Lehman
Chemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations
Cooperation is essential for evolution of biological complexity. Recent work has shown game theoretic arguments, commonly used to model biological cooperation, can also illuminate the dynamics of chemical systems. Here we investigate the types of cooperation possible in a real RNA system based on the Azoarcusribozyme, by constructing a taxonomy of possible cooperative groups. We construct a computational model of this system to investigate the features of the real system promoting cooperation. We find triplet interactions among genotypes are intrinsically biased towards cooperation due to the particular distribution of catalytic rate constants measured empirically in the real system. For other …
Life’S Late Digital Revolution And Why It Matters For The Study Of The Origins Of Life, David A. Baum, Niles Lehman
Life’S Late Digital Revolution And Why It Matters For The Study Of The Origins Of Life, David A. Baum, Niles Lehman
Chemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations
The information contained in life exists in two forms, analog and digital. Analog information is manifest mainly in the differing concentrations of chemicals that get passed from generation to generation and can vary from cell to cell. Digital information is encoded in linear polymers such as DNA and RNA, whose side chains come in discrete chemical forms. Here, we argue that the analog form of information preceded the digital. Acceptance of this dichotomy, and this progression, can help direct future studies on how life originated and initially complexified on the primordial Earth, as well as expected trajectories for other, independent …