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Compositional genomes: prebiotic information transfer in mutually catalytic noncovalent assemblies.

D Segré1, D Ben-Eli, D Lancet

  • 1Department of Molecular Genetics and the Crown Human Genome Center, The Weizmann Institute of Science, 76100 Rehovot, Israel.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
|April 13, 2000
PubMed
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Simple organic molecules can self-replicate and evolve chemically. This study shows how molecular assemblies exhibit homeostasis and transfer chemical information, suggesting a pathway to early life without a genetic apparatus.

Area of Science:

  • * Origin of Life Research
  • * Chemical Evolution
  • * Systems Chemistry

Background:

  • * Mutually catalytic sets of simple organic molecules proposed for self-replication and chemical evolution.
  • * Previous models focused on global properties of biopolymers using graph theory and mean field approaches.
  • * Experimental studies demonstrated self-replication in autocatalytic amphiphilic assemblies.

Purpose of the Study:

  • * To analyze the kinetic behavior of small, heterogeneous molecular assemblies under prebiotic conditions.
  • * To investigate how kinetically enhanced recruitment and spontaneous assembly dynamics lead to complex population behavior.
  • * To explore the potential for chemical information transfer and evolution in systems without genetic material.

Main Methods:

Related Experiment Videos

  • * Numerical simulation of detailed chemical kinetics within molecular assemblies.
  • * Application of a statistical formalism for mutual rate enhancement.
  • * Modeling of spontaneous growth and splitting of assemblies.

    • Main Results:

    • * Demonstrated complex population behavior arising from simple assumptions.
    • * Observed significant homeostasis in molecular assemblies, akin to quasi-stationary states.
    • * Identified emergent, catalysis-driven entities with rudimentary "compositional genomes".

    Conclusions:

    • * Mutually catalytic metabolic networks can exhibit information transfer and undergo selection.
    • * Natural selection can occur in molecular populations without a genetic apparatus.
    • * This provides a potential pathway from random molecular assemblies to minimal protocells.