Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres

article

Uniquely Localized Intra-Molecular Amino Acid Concentrations at the Glycolytic Enzyme Catalytic/Active Centers of Archaea, Bacteria and Eukaryota are Associated with Their Proposed Temporal Appearances on Earth

J. Dennis Pollack, David Gerard, Dennis K. Pearl

Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres > 2013 > 43 > 2 > 161-187

The distributions of amino acids at most-conserved sites nearest catalytic/active centers (C/AC) in 4,645 sequences of ten enzymes of the glycolytic Embden-Meyerhof-Parnas pathway in Archaea, Bacteria and Eukaryota are similar to the proposed temporal order of their appearance on Earth. Glycine, isoleucine, leucine, valine, glutamic acid and possibly lysine often described as prebiotic, i.e., existing...

article

Potassium Ions are More Effective than Sodium Ions in Salt Induced Peptide Formation

Michael V. Dubina, Sergey Yu. Vyazmin, Vitali M. Boitsov, Eugene N. Nikolaev, more

Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres > 2013 > 43 > 2 > 109-117

Prebiotic peptide formation under aqueous conditions in the presence of metal ions is one of the plausible triggers of the emergence of life. The salt-induced peptide formation reaction has been suggested as being prebiotically relevant and was examined for the formation of peptides in NaCl solutions. In previous work we have argued that the first protocell could have emerged in KCl solution. Using...

article

Life is a Self-Organizing Machine Driven by the Informational Cycle of Brillouin

Denis Michel

Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres > 2013 > 43 > 2 > 137-150

Acquiring information is indisputably energy-consuming and conversely, the availability of information permits greater efficiency. Strangely, the scientific community long remained reluctant to establish a physical equivalence between the abstract notion of information and sensible thermodynamics. However, certain physicists such as Szilard and Brillouin proposed: (i) to give to information the status...

article

Deracemization of Amino Acids by Partial Sublimation and via Homochiral Self-Organization

Arkadii V. Tarasevych, Alexander E. Sorochinsky, Valery P. Kukhar, Jean-Claude Guillemin

Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres > 2013 > 43 > 2 > 129-135

Deracemization of a 50/50 mixture of enantiomers of aliphatic amino acids (Ala, Leu, Pro, Val) can be achieved by a simple sublimation of a pre-solubilized solid mixture of the racemates with a huge amount of a less-volatile optically active amino acid (Asn, Asp, Glu, Ser, Thr). The choice of chirality correlates with the handedness of the enantiopure amino acids—Asn, Asp, Glu, Ser, and Thr. The deracemization,...

article

Degradation of Glycine and Alanine on Irradiated Quartz

Maciej Pawlikowski, Aleksandra Benko, Tomasz P. Wróbel

Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres > 2013 > 43 > 2 > 119-127

Recent researches suggest participation of minerals in the formation of life under primordial conditions. Among all of the minerals, quartz seems to be one of the most probable to take part in such processes. However, an external source of energy is needed, e.g. electric discharge. A device simulating the proposed conditions was designed and was used to simulate prebiotic conditions. Investigation...

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Survivability and Abiotic Reactions of Selected Amino Acids in Different Hydrothermal System Simulators

Kuhan Chandru, Eiichi Imai, Takeo Kaneko, Yumiko Obayashi, more

Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres > 2013 > 43 > 2 > 99-108

We tested the stability and reaction of several amino acids using hydrothermal system simulators: an autoclave and two kinds of flow reactors at 200–250 °C. This study generally showed that there is a variation in the individual amino acids survivability in the simulators. This is mainly attributed to the following factors; heat time, cold quenching exposure, metal ions and also silica. We observed...

article

Biological Evolution of Replicator Systems: Towards a Quantitative Approach

Osmel Martin, J. E. Horvath

Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres > 2013 > 43 > 2 > 151-160

The aim of this work is to study the features of a simple replicator chemical model of the relation between kinetic stability and entropy production under the action of external perturbations. We quantitatively explore the different paths leading to evolution in a toy model where two independent replicators compete for the same substrate. To do that, the same scenario described originally by Pross...

article

Atmospheric Production of Glycolaldehyde Under Hazy Prebiotic Conditions

Chester E. Harman, James F. Kasting, Eric T. Wolf

Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres > 2013 > 43 > 2 > 77-98

The early Earth’s atmosphere, with extremely low levels of molecular oxygen and an appreciable abiotic flux of methane, could have been a source of organic compounds necessary for prebiotic chemistry. Here, we investigate the formation of a key RNA precursor, glycolaldehyde (2-hydroxyacetaldehyde, or GA) using a 1-dimensional photochemical model. Maximum atmospheric production of GA occurs when the...

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Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres

Uniquely Localized Intra-Molecular Amino Acid Concentrations at the Glycolytic Enzyme Catalytic/Active Centers of Archaea, Bacteria and Eukaryota are Associated with Their Proposed Temporal Appearances on Earth

Potassium Ions are More Effective than Sodium Ions in Salt Induced Peptide Formation

Life is a Self-Organizing Machine Driven by the Informational Cycle of Brillouin

Deracemization of Amino Acids by Partial Sublimation and via Homochiral Self-Organization

Degradation of Glycine and Alanine on Irradiated Quartz

Survivability and Abiotic Reactions of Selected Amino Acids in Different Hydrothermal System Simulators

Biological Evolution of Replicator Systems: Towards a Quantitative Approach

Atmospheric Production of Glycolaldehyde Under Hazy Prebiotic Conditions

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