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Investigating the Evolution and Development of Biological Systems from the Perspective of Thermo-Kinetics and Systems Theory Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2020-12-03 Mohammad Amin Boojari
Life itself is grander than the sum of its constituent molecules. Any living organism may be regarded as a part of a dissipative process that connects irreversible energy consumption with growth, reproduction, and evolution. Under energy-fuelled, far-from-equilibrium conditions, chemical systems capable of exponential growth can manifest a specific form of stability– dynamic kinetic stability (DKS)
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Chiral Symmetry Breaking in Large Peptide Systems. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2020-09-18 Konstantin K Konstantinov,Alisa F Konstantinova
Chiral symmetry breaking in far from equilibrium systems with large number of amino acids and peptides, like a prebiotic Earth, was considered. It was shown that if organic catalysts were abundant, then effective averaging of enantioselectivity would prohibit any symmetry breaking in such systems. It was further argued that non-linear (catalytic) reactions must be very scarce (called the abundance
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Plausibility of the Formose Reaction in Alkaline Hydrothermal Vent Environments. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2020-08-04 Arthur Omran
Prebiotic processes required a reliable source of free energy and complex chemical mixtures that may have included sugars. The formose reaction is a potential source of those sugars. At moderate to elevated temperature and pH ranges, these sugars rapidly decay. Here it is shown that CaCO3-based chemical gardens catalyze the formose reaction to produce glucose, ribose, and other monosaccharides. These
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Survival of the Halophilic Archaeon Halovarius luteus after Desiccation, Simulated Martian UV Radiation and Vacuum in Comparison to Bacillus atrophaeus. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2020-07-02 Niloofar Feshangsaz,Farid Semsarha,Saeed Hesami Tackallou,Kamran Nazmi,Euan P Monaghan,Andreas Riedo,Jack J W A van Loon
Extraterrestrial environments influence the biochemistry of organisms through a variety of factors, including high levels of radiation and vacuum, temperature extremes and a lack of water and nutrients. A wide variety of terrestrial microorganisms, including those counted amongst the most ancient inhabitants of Earth, can cope with high levels of salinity, extreme temperatures, desiccation and high
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Parity Violation Energy of Biomolecules - V: Protein Metal Centers. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2020-06-20 Francesco Faglioni,Bianca Fracassini,Luca Perrone
The parity-violation difference between mirror images of chiral metal centers found in naturally occurring proteins and enzymes is computed at the Dirac-Hartree-Fock level, for both equilibrium and transition state configurations. The systems, selected on the likelihood of yielding high parity violation energies based on atomic mass and coordination geometry, are extracted from: type I Blue Copper
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The Prebiotic Provenance of Semi-Aqueous Solvents. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2020-05-09 Jennifer L Lago,Bradley T Burcar,Nicholas V Hud,Rio Febrian,Christopher Mehta,Paul J Bracher,Zachary D Atlas,Matthew A Pasek
The numerous and varied roles of phosphorylated organic molecules in biochemistry suggest they may have been important to the origin of life. The prominence of phosphorylated molecules presents a conundrum given that phosphorylation is a thermodynamically unfavorable, endergonic process in water, and most natural sources of phosphate are poorly soluble. We recently demonstrated that a semi-aqueous
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Chirality Driven Twisting as a Driving Force of Primitive Folding in Binary Mixtures. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2020-04-30 Dmitry V Zlenko,Aleksey A Skoblin,Alexander S Vedenkin,Mariya G Mikhaleva,Anatoly M Zanin,Vsevolod A Tverdislov,Sergey V Stovbun
The N-trifluoroacetylated α-aminoalcohols (TFAAAs) are able to form quasi-one-dimensional supramolecular fibers (strings) when chirally pure, and isometric precipitates in the racemate. The strings' formation leads to the reversible gelation of the solution. The fresh gels occupy all the available volume, however during the incubation, they contract and concentrate in the central region of the tube
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Alteration and Stability of Complex Macromolecular Amino Acid Precursors in Hydrothermal Environments. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2020-04-20 Walaa Elmasry,Yoko Kebukawa,Takeo Kaneko,Yumiko Obayashi,Hitoshi Fukuda,Yoshiyuki Oguri,Kensei Kobayashi
The early Solar System comprised a broad area of abiotically created organic compounds, including interstellar organics which were integrated into planetesimals and parent bodies of meteorites, and eventually delivered to the early Earth. In this study, we simulated interstellar complex organic compounds synthesized by proton irradiation of a gas mixture of CO, NH3, and H2O, which are known to release
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Unexpected Thiocyanate Adsorption onto Ferrihydrite Under Prebiotic Chemistry Conditions. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2020-04-07 Dimas A M Zaia,Paulo C G de Carvalho,Rafael B Samulewski,Rodrigo de Carvalho Pereira,Cássia Thaïs B V Zaia
The most crucial role played by minerals was in the preconcentration of biomolecules or precursors of biomolecules in prebiotic seas. If this step had not occurred, molecular evolution would not have occurred. Thiocyanate is an important molecule in the formation of biomolecules as well as a catalyst for prebiotic reactions. The adsorption of thiocyanate onto ferrihydrite was carried out under pH and
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Symphony in C: Carbon and the Evolution of (Almost) Everything by Robert M. Hazen, W.W. Norton & Company, 2019. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2020-06-01 Peter R Bahn
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On A Hypothetical Mechanism of Interstellar Life Transfer Trough Nomadic Objects. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2020-02-07 Grzegorz Sadlok
Lethal radiation, low vacuum pressure and low temperatures - this is how space welcomes organisms. Crossing of immense interstellar distances inflates the exposure time of biological material to harmful space conditions. This paper discusses the intriguing possibility of a life-bearing exoplanet being ejected from its planetary system and carrying life across interstellar distances (nomadic = free
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Reactivity of Metabolic Intermediates and Cofactor Stability under Model Early Earth Conditions. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2020-01-25 Thora R Maltais,David VanderVelde,Douglas E LaRowe,Aaron D Goldman,Laura M Barge
Understanding the emergence of metabolic pathways is key to unraveling the factors that promoted the origin of life. One popular view is that protein cofactors acted as catalysts prior to the evolution of the protein enzymes with which they are now associated. We investigated the stability of acetyl coenzyme A (Acetyl Co-A, the group transfer cofactor in citric acid synthesis in the TCA cycle) under
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Membranes Composed of Lipopeptides and Liponucleobases Inspired Protolife Evolution. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2019-12-27 Gordon D Sproul
Amino acids and peptides have been demonstrated to form lipoamino acids and lipopeptides under presumed prebiotic conditions, and readily form liposomes. Of the common nucleobases, adenine forms a liponucleobase even below 100 °C. Adenine as well as other nucleobases can also be derivatized with ethylene carbonate (and likely other similar compounds) onto which fatty acids can be attached. The fatty
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Carbonyl Sulfide as a Prebiotic Activation Agent for Stereo- and Sequence-Selective, Amyloid-Templated Peptide Elongation. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2019-12-16 Radoslaw Bomba,Saroj K Rout,Matthias Bütikofer,Witek Kwiatkowski,Roland Riek,Jason Greenwald
Prebiotic chemical replication is a commonly assumed precursor to and prerequisite for life and as such is the one of the goals of our research. We have previously reported on the role that short peptide amyloids could have played in a template-based chemical elongation. Here we take a step closer to the goal by reproducing amyloid-templated peptide elongation with carbonyl sulfide (COS) in place of
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Imidazolium-Catalyzed Synthesis of an Imidazolium Catalyst. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2019-12-08 Arthur L Weber,Andro C Rios
The chemistry of imidazolium-catalyzed imidazolium synthesis was studied as part of an effort to develop a plausible prebiotic synthesis of a small catalytic molecule capable of catalyzing its own synthesis. Specifically, we investigated the one-pot 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium acetate (EMIM-Ac) catalyzed synthesis of 1,3-dibutyl-4,5-difuryl-imidazolium acetate (DBDFIM-Ac) from furfural, n-butylamine
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The Oligomerization of Glucose Under Plausible Prebiotic Conditions. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2019-12-02 Zhao Li,Li Li,Kristin R McKenna,Merranda Schmidt,Pamela Pollet,Leslie Gelbaum,Facundo M Fernández,Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy,Charles L Liotta
The prebiotic origin of polysaccharides, the largest class of biopolymers by mass in extant biology, has seldom been investigated experimentally. Herein, we report on the acid-catalyzed condensation of aqueous solutions of glucose, a model monosaccharide, under plausible prebiotic conditions employing a wet-dry (night-day) protocol with 0.01 M HCl at 50 °C. This protocol leads to the formation of oligosaccharides
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ASTROBIOLOGY AND HUMANISM: Conversations on Science, Philosophy and Theology by Julian Chela-Flores, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2019-08-10 Peter R Bahn
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Pyrite and Organic Compounds Coexisting in Intrusive Mafic Xenoliths (Hyblean Plateau, Sicily): Implications for Subsurface Abiogenesis. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2019-07-16 Vittorio Scribano,Sergei K Simakov,Claudio Finocchiaro,Alessandra Correale,Salvatore Scirè
Pyrite and organic matter closely coexist in some hydrothermally-altered gabbroic xenoliths from the Hyblean Plateau, Sicily. The representative sample consists of plagioclase, Fe-oxides, clinopyroxene, pyrite and minor amounts of many other minerals. Plagioclase displays incipient albitization, clinopyroxene is deeply corroded. Pyrite grains are widely replaced by spongy-textured magnetite, which
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The Limited Roles of Autocatalysis and Enantiomeric Cross-Inhibition in Achieving Homochirality in Dilute Systems. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2019-07-10 Axel Brandenburg
To understand the effects of fluctuations on achieving homochirality, we employ a Monte-Carlo method where autocatalysis and enantiomeric cross-inhibition, as well as racemization and deracemization reactions are included. The results of earlier work either without autocatalysis or without cross-inhibition are reproduced. Bifurcation diagrams and the dependencies of the number of reaction steps on
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Chiral Recognition in Cold Gas-Phase Cluster Ions of Carbohydrates and Tryptophan Probed by Photodissociation. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2019-04-05 Doan Thuc Nguyen,Akimasa Fujihara
Chiral recognition between tryptophan (Trp) and carbohydrates such as D-glucose (D-Glc), methyl-α-D-glucoside (D-glucoside), D-maltose, and D-cellobiose in cold gas-phase cluster ions was investigated as a model for chemical evolution in interstellar molecular clouds using a tandem mass spectrometer containing a cold ion trap. The photodissociation mass spectra of cold gas-phase clusters that contained
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The Birthplace of Proto-Life: Role of Secondary Minerals in Forming Metallo-Proteins through Water-Rock Interaction of Hadean Rocks. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2019-04-03 Kazumi Yoshiya,Tomohiko Sato,Soichi Omori,Shigenori Maruyama
The surface of Hadean Earth was mainly covered with three types of rocks-komatiite, KREEP basalt and anorthosite-which were remarkably different from those on the modern Earth. The water-rock interaction between these rocks and water provided a highly reducing environment and formed secondary minerals on the surface of the rocks that are important for producing metallo-enzymes for the emergence of
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Methanogenesis on Early Stages of Life: Ancient but Not Primordial. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2019-01-05 Israel Muñoz-Velasco,Carlos García-Ferris,Ricardo Hernandez-Morales,Antonio Lazcano,Juli Peretó,Arturo Becerra
Of the six known autotrophic pathways, the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway (WL) is the only one present in both the acetate producing Bacteria (homoacetogens) and the methane producing Archaea (hydrogenotrophic methanogens), and it has been suggested that WL is one of the oldest metabolic pathways. However, only the so-called carbonyl branch is shared by Archaea and Bacteria, while the methyl branch is different
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A Possible Prebiotic Ancestry of Porphyrin-Type Protein Cofactors. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2018-12-13 Hannes Lukas Pleyer,Henry Strasdeit,Stefan Fox
In previous experiments that simulated conditions on primordial volcanic islands, we demonstrated the abiotic formation of hydrophobic porphyrins. The present study focused on the question whether such porphyrins can be metalated by prebiotically plausible metal ion sources. We used water-insoluble octaethylporphyrin (H2oep) as a model compound. Experiments were conducted in a nitrogen atmosphere under
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The Tangled Tree: a Radical New History of Life by David Quammen, Simon & Schuster, 2018. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2018-10-29 Peter R Bahn
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Trimetaphosphate Activates Prebiotic Peptide Synthesis across a Wide Range of Temperature and pH. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2018-10-01 Izabela Sibilska,Yu Feng,Lingjun Li,John Yin
The biochemical activation of amino acids by adenosine triphosphate (ATP) drives the synthesis of proteins that are essential for all life. On the early Earth, before the emergence of cellular life, the chemical condensation of amino acids to form prebiotic peptides or proteins may have been activated by inorganic polyphosphates, such as tri metaphosphate (TP). Plausible volcanic and other potential
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Models of Replicator Proliferation Involving Differential Replicator Subunit Stability. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2018-09-12 Zewei Li,Runhe Lyu,John Tower
Several models for the origin of life involve molecules that are capable of self-replication, such as self-replicating polymers composed of RNA or DNA or amino acids. Here we consider a hypothetical replicator (AB) composed of two subunits, A and B. Programs written in Python and C programming languages were used to model AB replicator abundance as a function of cycles of replication (iterations),
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Investigating the Kinetics of Montmorillonite Clay-Catalyzed Conversion of Anthracene to 9,10-Anthraquinone in the Context of Prebiotic Chemistry. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2018-09-12 Hope L Juntunen,Lucas J Leinen,Briann K Pitts,Samantha M O'Hanlon,Bethany P Theiling,Laura M Barge,Patrick Videau,Michael O Gaylor
Carbonaceous meteorites contributed polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) to the organic inventory of the primordial Earth where they may have reacted on catalytic clay mineral surfaces to produce quinones capable of functioning as redox species in emergent biomolecular systems. To address the feasibility of this hypothesis, we assessed the kinetics of anthracene (1) conversion to 9,10-anthraquinone
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Correction to: Publication of Abstracts and Full Papers from the International Conference on the Origin of Life, San Diego, 2017. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2018-09-01 Alan W Schwartz
Plans for the publication of Abstracts from the meeting have been cancelled. However, manuscripts for full papers will still be considered for publication in OLEB.
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Water near its Supercritical Point and at Alkaline pH for the Production of Ferric Oxides and Silicates in Anoxic Conditions. A New Hypothesis for the Synthesis of Minerals Observed in Banded Iron Formations and for the Related Geobiotropic Chemistry inside Fluid Inclusions. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2018-08-10 Marie-Paule Bassez
An alternative hypothesis for the origin of the banded iron formations and the synthesis of prebiotic molecules is presented here. I show the importance of considering water near its supercritical point and at alkaline pH. It is based on the chemical equation for the anoxic oxidation of ferrous iron into ferric iron at high-subcritical conditions of water and high pH, that I extract from E-pH diagrams
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The Standard Genetic Code can Evolve from a Two-Letter GC Code Without Information Loss or Costly Reassignments. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2018-07-01 Alejandro Frank,Tom Froese
It is widely agreed that the standard genetic code must have been preceded by a simpler code that encoded fewer amino acids. How this simpler code could have expanded into the standard genetic code is not well understood because most changes to the code are costly. Taking inspiration from the recently synthesized six-letter code, we propose a novel hypothesis: the initial genetic code consisted of
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Synthesis of β-Peptide Standards for Use in Model Prebiotic Reactions. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2018-05-26 Jay G Forsythe,Sloane L English,Rachel E Simoneaux,Arthur L Weber
A one-pot method was developed for the preparation of a series of β-alanine standards of moderate size (2 to ≥12 residues) for studies concerning the prebiotic origins of peptides. The one-pot synthesis involved two sequential reactions: (1) dry-down self-condensation of β-alanine methyl ester, yielding β-alanine peptide methyl ester oligomers, and (2) subsequent hydrolysis of β-alanine peptide methyl
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In the Beginning was a Mutualism - On the Origin of Translation. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2018-05-02 Marko Vitas,Andrej Dobovišek
The origin of translation is critical for understanding the evolution of life, including the origins of life. The canonical genetic code is one of the most dominant aspects of life on this planet, while the origin of heredity is one of the key evolutionary transitions in living world. Why the translation apparatus evolved is one of the enduring mysteries of molecular biology. Assuming the hypothesis
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Selective Formation of Ser-His Dipeptide via Phosphorus Activation. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2018-05-01 Wanyun Shu,Yongfei Yu,Su Chen,Xia Yan,Yan Liu,Yufen Zhao
The Ser-His dipeptide is the shortest active peptide. This dipeptide not only hydrolyzes proteins and DNA but also catalyzes the formation of peptides and phosphodiester bonds. As a potential candidate for the prototype of modern hydrolase, Ser-His has attracted increasing attention. To explore if Ser-His could be obtained efficiently in the prebiotic condition, we investigated the reactions of N-DIPP-Ser
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Acetyl Phosphate as a Primordial Energy Currency at the Origin of Life. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2018-03-05 Alexandra Whicher,Eloi Camprubi,Silvana Pinna,Barry Herschy,Nick Lane
Metabolism is primed through the formation of thioesters via acetyl CoA and the phosphorylation of substrates by ATP. Prebiotic equivalents such as methyl thioacetate and acetyl phosphate have been proposed to catalyse analogous reactions at the origin of life, but their propensity to hydrolyse challenges this view. Here we show that acetyl phosphate (AcP) can be synthesised in water within minutes
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Salinity Effects on the Adsorption of Nucleic Acid Compounds on Na-Montmorillonite: a Prebiotic Chemistry Experiment. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2018-02-03 Saúl A Villafañe-Barajas,João Paulo T Baú,María Colín-García,Alicia Negrón-Mendoza,Alejandro Heredia-Barbero,Teresa Pi-Puig,Dimas A M Zaia
Any proposed model of Earth's primitive environments requires a combination of geochemical variables. Many experiments are prepared in aqueous solutions and in the presence of minerals. However, most sorption experiments are performed in distilled water, and just a few in seawater analogues, mostly inconsistent with a representative primitive ocean model. Therefore, it is necessary to perform experiments
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A Proposal of the Ur-proteome. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2017-11-12 Miryam Palacios-Pérez,Fernando Andrade-Díaz,Marco V José
Herein we outline a plausible proteome, encoded by assuming a primeval RNY genetic code. We unveil the primeval phenotype by using only the RNA genotype; it means that we recovered the most ancestral proteome, mostly made of the 8 amino acids encoded by RNY triplets. By looking at those fragments, it is noticeable that they are positioned, not at catalytic sites, but in the cofactor binding sites.
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Chiral Symmetry Breaking in Peptide Systems During Formation of Life on Earth. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2017-11-10 Konstantin K Konstantinov,Alisa F Konstantinova
Chiral symmetry breaking in complex chemical systems with a large number of amino acids and a large number of similar reactions was considered. It was shown that effective averaging over similar reaction channels may result in very weak effective enantioselectivity of forward reactions, which does not allow most of the known models to result in chiral symmetry breaking during formation of life on Earth
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Phenotypic Graphs and Evolution Unfold the Standard Genetic Code as the Optimal. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2017-10-31 Gabriel S Zamudio,Marco V José
In this work, we explicitly consider the evolution of the Standard Genetic Code (SGC) by assuming two evolutionary stages, to wit, the primeval RNY code and two intermediate codes in between. We used network theory and graph theory to measure the connectivity of each phenotypic graph. The connectivity values are compared to the values of the codes under different randomization scenarios. An error-correcting
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Primary Formation Path of Formaldehyde in Hydrothermal Vents. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2017-09-07 Satoshi Inaba
Formaldehyde is abundant in the universe and one of the fundamental molecules for life. Hydrothermal vents produce a substantial amount of hydrogen molecules by serpentinization and promote reductive reactions of single carbon compounds. The abundance of formaldehyde is expected to be low due to the high Gibbs free energy in hydrothermal vents. We consider two competing formation pathways of formaldehyde:
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Publication of Abstracts and Full Papers from the International Conference on the Origin of Life, San Diego, 2017. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2017-08-18 Alan W Schwartz
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Amorphous Silica-Promoted Lysine Dimerization: a Thermodynamic Prediction. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2017-08-16 Norio Kitadai,Kumiko Nishiuchi,Akari Nishii,Keisuke Fukushi
It has long been suggested that mineral surfaces played a crucial role in the abiotic polymerization of amino acids that preceded the origin of life. Nevertheless, it remains unclear where the prebiotic process took place on the primitive Earth, because the amino acid-mineral interaction and its dependence on environmental conditions have yet to be understood adequately. Here we examined experimentally
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Mechanism for the Coupled Photochemistry of Ammonia and Acetylene: Implications for Giant Planets, Comets and Interstellar Organic Synthesis. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2017-08-10 Thomas C Keane
Laboratory studies provide a fundamental understanding of photochemical processes in planetary atmospheres. Photochemical reactions taking place on giant planets like Jupiter and possibly comets and the interstellar medium are the subject of this research. Reaction pathways are proposed for the coupled photochemistry of NH3 (ammonia) and C2H2 (acetylene) within the context Jupiter's atmosphere. We
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Polycondensation of Asparagine-comprising Dipeptides in Aqueous Media-A Simulation of Polypeptide Formation in Primordial Earth Hydrosphere. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2017-07-27 Toratane Munegumi,Naoya Tanikawa
Asparagine and aspartic acid might have mutually transformed in the primordial hydrosphere of the earth, if ammonia and aspartic acid had existed in equilibrium. These amino acids seem to contribute to polypeptides, while the simple amino acids glycine and alanine easily form cyclic dipeptides and do not achieve long peptide chains. Asparagine-comprising dipeptides contribute some kinds of activation
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Origins of Life Research: a Bibliometric Approach. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2017-07-14 Arsev Umur Aydinoglu,Zehra Taşkın
This study explores the collaborative nature and interdisciplinarity of the origin(s) of life (OoL) research community. Although OoL research is one of the oldest topics in philosophy, religion, and science; to date there has been no review of the field utilizing bibliometric measures. A dataset of 5647 publications that are tagged as OoL, astrobiology, exobiology, and prebiotic chemistry is analyzed
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Enantiomer-Selective Photo-Induced Reaction of Protonated Tryptophan with Disaccharides in the Gas Phase. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2017-07-10 Thuc N Doan,Akimasa Fujihara
In order to investigate chemical evolution in interstellar molecular clouds, enantiomer-selective photo-induced chemical reactions between an amino acid and disaccharides in the gas phase were examined using a tandem mass spectrometer containing an electrospray ionization source and a cold ion trap. Ultraviolet photodissociation mass spectra of cold gas-phase noncovalent complexes of protonated tryptophan
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Environmental Adaptation from the Origin of Life to the Last Universal Common Ancestor. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2017-07-08 Marjorie D Cantine,Gregory P Fournier
Extensive fundamental molecular and biological evolution took place between the prebiotic origins of life and the state of the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA). Considering the evolutionary innovations between these two endpoints from the perspective of environmental adaptation, we explore the hypothesis that LUCA was temporally, spatially, and environmentally distinct from life's earliest origins
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Introduction to the Special Issue - a Personal Note. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2017-07-05 Alan W Schwartz
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Identity Elements of tRNA as Derived from Information Analysis. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2017-07-01 Gabriel S Zamudio,Marco V José
The decipherment of the tRNA's operational code, known as the identity problem, requires the location of the sites in the tRNA structure that are involved in their correct recognition by the corresponding aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase. In this work, we determine the identity elements of each tRNA isoacceptor by means of the variation of information measure from information theory. We show that all isoacceptors
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Survival and Adaptation of the Thermophilic Species Geobacillus thermantarcticus in Simulated Spatial Conditions. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2017-06-09 Paola Di Donato,Ida Romano,Vincenza Mastascusa,Annarita Poli,Pierangelo Orlando,Mariagabriella Pugliese,Barbara Nicolaus
Astrobiology studies the origin and evolution of life on Earth and in the universe. According to the panspermia theory, life on Earth could have emerged from bacterial species transported by meteorites, that were able to adapt and proliferate on our planet. Therefore, the study of extremophiles, i.e. bacterial species able to live in extreme terrestrial environments, can be relevant to Astrobiology
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Racemization of Valine by Impact-Induced Heating. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2017-05-10 Yoshihiro Furukawa,Atsushi Takase,Toshimori Sekine,Takeshi Kakegawa,Takamichi Kobayashi
Homochirality plays an important role in all living organisms but its origin remains unclear. It also remains unclear whether such chiral molecules survived terrestrial heavy impact events. Impacts of extraterrestrial objects on early oceans were frequent and could have affected the chirality of oceanic amino acids when such amino acids accumulated during impacts. This study investigated the effects
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On the Ability of Formaldehyde to Act as a Tethering Catalyst in Water. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2017-05-06 Mohammad P Jamshidi,Melissa J MacDonald,André M Beauchemin
The low concentration issue is a fundamental challenge when it comes to prebiotic chemistry, as macromolecular systems need to be assembled via intermolecular reactions, and this is inherently difficult in dilute solutions. This is especially true when the reactions are challenging, and reactions that proceeded more rapidly could have dictated chemical evolution. Herein we establish that formaldehyde
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Cataclysm No More: New Views on the Timing and Delivery of Lunar Impactors. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2017-05-05 Nicolle E B Zellner
If properly interpreted, the impact record of the Moon, Earth's nearest neighbour, can be used to gain insights into how the Earth has been influenced by impacting events since its formation ~4.5 billion years (Ga) ago. However, the nature and timing of the lunar impactors - and indeed the lunar impact record itself - are not well understood. Of particular interest are the ages of lunar impact basins
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Walking over 4 Gya: Chemical Evolution from Photochemistry to Mineral and Organic Chemistries Leading to an RNA World. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2017-04-23 Kunio Kawamura,Marie-Christine Maurel
Here we overview the chemical evolution of RNA molecules from inorganic material through mineral-mediated RNA formation compatible with the plausible early Earth environments. Pathways from the gas-phase reaction to the formation of nucleotides, activation and oligomerization of nucleotides, seem to be compatible with specific environments. However, how these steps interacted is not clear since the
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Transfer of Asymmetry between Proteinogenic Amino Acids under Harsh Conditions. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2017-04-01 Arkadii V Tarasevych,Thomas Vives,Valeriy N Snytnikov,Jean-Claude Guillemin
The heating above 400 °C of serine, cysteine, selenocysteine and threonine leads to a complete decomposition of the amino acids and to the formation in low yields of alanine for the three formers and of 2-aminobutyric acid for the latter. At higher temperature, this amino acid is observed only when sublimable α-alkyl-α-amino acids are present, and with an enantiomeric excess dependent on several parameters
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Anoxic and Oxic Oxidation of Rocks Containing Fe(II)Mg-Silicates and Fe(II)-Monosulfides as Source of Fe(III)-Minerals and Hydrogen. Geobiotropy. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2017-04-01 Marie-Paule Bassez
In this article, anoxic and oxic hydrolyses of rocks containing Fe (II) Mg-silicates and Fe (II)-monosulfides are analyzed at 25 °C and 250-350 °C. A table of the products is drawn. It is shown that magnetite and hydrogen can be produced during low-temperature (25 °C) anoxic hydrolysis/oxidation of ferrous silicates and during high-temperature (250 °C) anoxic hydrolysis/oxidation of ferrous monosulfides
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The Comparison of Hydrochloric Acid and Phosphoric Acid Treatments in the Preparation of Montmorillonite Catalysts for RNA Synthesis. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2017-02-18 Michael Frank Aldersley,Prakash C Joshi,Yixing Huang
The treatment of clay minerals with a preliminary acid wash and titration to pH 7 has proven to generate catalysts for the most interesting of oligomerization reactions in which activated RNA-nucleotides generate oligomers up to 40-mers. Significantly, not all clay minerals become catalytic following this treatment and none are catalytic in the absence of such treatment. The washing procedure has been
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Nucleotide Selectivity in Abiotic RNA Polymerization Reactions. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2017-02-06 Kristin M Coari,Rebecca C Martin,Kopal Jain,Linda B McGown
In order to establish an RNA world on early Earth, the nucleotides must form polymers through chemical rather than biochemical reactions. The polymerization products must be long enough to perform catalytic functions, including self-replication, and to preserve genetic information. These functions depend not only on the length of the polymers, but also on their sequences. To date, studies of abiotic
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Carbonaceous Chondrite Meteorites: the Chronicle of a Potential Evolutionary Path between Stars and Life. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. (IF 1.814) Pub Date : 2017-01-13 Sandra Pizzarello,Everett Shock
The biogenic elements, H, C, N, O, P and S, have a long cosmic history, whose evolution can still be observed in diverse locales of the known universe, from interstellar clouds of gas and dust, to pre-stellar cores, nebulas, protoplanetary discs, planets and planetesimals. The best analytical window into this cosmochemical evolution as it neared Earth has been provided so far by the small bodies of
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