The molecular roots of compositional inheritance

Area of Science:

• Origin of Life Research
• Systems Chemistry
• Biophysics

Background:

• Non-covalent compositional assemblies present an alternative inheritance mechanism to biopolymers.
• These assemblies are central to
• Metabolism First
• origin of life scenarios and the Graded Autocatalysis Replication Domain (GARD) model.

Purpose of the Study:

• To analyze the quantitative molecular basis of inheritance in non-covalent assemblies.
• To define conditions favoring high reproduction fidelity in early pre-biotic systems.

Main Methods:

• Development of a novel heritability measure, eta(*)(s).
• Analysis of the dependence of reproduction fidelity on molecular recognition parameters and assembly size.
• Investigating the impact of different distributions (normal vs. lognormal) of catalytic rate acceleration coefficients.

Main Results:

• Reproduction fidelity (eta(*)(s)) is sensitive to molecular recognition parameters and assembly size.
• Normal distribution of catalytic rates leads to
• compositional error catastrophes
• , preventing information transfer.
• Lognormal distribution of catalytic rates, consistent with statistical formalisms, yields high reproduction fidelity.
• Optimal assembly size for maximal fidelity is approximately 3.5 N(G)/lambda.

Conclusions:

• The distribution of catalytic rates and assembly size are critical factors for pre-biotic inheritance.
• Lognormal distributions of catalytic rates are essential for high-fidelity information transfer in early life.
• These findings delineate physicochemical conditions conducive to the emergence of pre-biotic evolution.