Life as we know it relies on the interplay between catalytic activity and information processing carried out by biological polymers. Here we present a plausible pathway by which a pool of prebiotic information-coding oligomers could acquire an early catalytic function, namely sequence-specific cleavage activity. Starting with a system capable of non-enzymatic templated replication, we demonstrate that even non-catalyzed spontaneous cleavage would promote proliferation by generating short fragments that act as primers. Furthermore, we show that catalytic cleavage function can naturally emerge and proliferate in this system. Specifically, a cooperative catalytic network with four subpopulations of oligomers is selected by the evolution in competition with chains lacking catalytic activity. The cooperative system emerges through the functional differentiation of oligomers into catalysts and their substrates. The model is inspired by the structure of the hammerhead RNA enzyme as well as other DNA- and RNA-based enzymes with cleavage activity that readily emerge through natural or artificial selection. We identify the conditions necessary for the emergence of the cooperative catalytic network. In particular, we show that it requires the catalytic rate enhancement over the spontaneous cleavage rate to be at least 10²–10³, a factor consistent with the existing experiments. The evolutionary pressure leads to a further increase in catalytic efficiency. The presented mechanism provides an escape route from a relatively simple pairwise replication of oligomers toward a more complex behavior involving catalytic function. This provides a bridge between the information-first origin of life scenarios and the paradigm of autocatalytic sets and hypercycles, albeit based on cleavage rather than synthesis of reactants.

中文翻译：

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益生元信息编码聚合物中催化功能的出现

我们所知道的生命依赖于生物聚合物的催化活性和信息处理之间的相互作用。在这里，我们提出了一种合理的途径，通过该途径，一组益生元信息编码寡聚物可以获得早期催化功能，即序列特异性切割活性。从能够非酶模板化复制的系统开始，我们证明即使是非催化自发切割也会通过生成充当引物的短片段来促进增殖。此外，我们表明催化裂解功能可以在该系统中自然出现和增殖。具体来说，通过与缺乏催化活性的链竞争的进化来选择具有四个低聚物亚群的协作催化网络。协同系统是通过低聚物功能分化为催化剂及其底物而出现的。该模型的灵感来自锤头状 RNA 酶以及其他具有切割活性的基于 DNA 和 RNA 的酶的结构，这些酶很容易通过自然或人工选择而出现。我们确定了合作催化网络出现的必要条件。特别是，我们表明，它要求催化速率比自发裂解速率至少提高 10 ² –10 ³，这一因素与现有实验一致。进化压力导致催化效率进一步提高。所提出的机制提供了一条从相对简单的低聚物成对复制到涉及催化功能的更复杂行为的逃生路线。这在信息优先的生命起源场景与自催化组和超循环的范式之间架起了一座桥梁，尽管是基于反应物的裂解而不是合成。