Autocatalytic replication of polymers

Farmer, J. Doyne; Kauffman, Stuart; Packard, Norman H.

doi:10.1016/0167-2789(86)90233-2

Cited by 218 publications

(213 citation statements)

References 13 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

208

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In contrast, without the valence-two particle, the graph has 26 clusters, the probability of a connection between any two clusters is less than 40%, and there are no cycles. Interestingly, this is in accord with existence of a critical value of connection probability above which catalytic cycles emerge, as predicted by Kauffman (Farmer et al, 1986;Kauffman, 1986).…”

Section: Metabolismsupporting

confidence: 67%

Colloquium : Toward living matter with colloidal particles

2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A fundamental unsolved problem is to understand the differences between inanimate matter and living matter. Although this question might be framed as philosophical, there are many fundamental and practical reasons to pursue the development of synthetic materials with the properties of living ones. There are three fundamental properties of living materials that we seek to reproduce: The ability to spontaneously assemble complex structures; the ability to self-replicate; and the ability to perform complex and coordinated reactions that enable transformations impossible to realize if a single structure acted alone. The conditions that are required for a synthetic material to have these properties are currently unknown. This colloquium examines whether these phenomena could emerge by programming interactions between colloidal particles, an approach that bootstraps off of recent advances in DNA nanotechnology and in the mathematics of sphere packings. We argue that the essential properties of living matter could emerge from colloidal interactions that are specific -so that each particle can be programmed to bind or not bind to any other particleand also time-dependent -so that the binding strength between two particles could increase or decrease in time at a controlled rate. There is a small regime of interaction parameters that give rise to colloidal particles with life-like properties, including self-assembly, self-replication and metabolism. The parameter range for these phenomena can be identified using a combinatorial search over the set of known sphere packings. * zorana.zeravcic@espci.fr 2 CONTENTS

show abstract

Section: Metabolismsupporting

confidence: 67%

Colloquium : Toward living matter with colloidal particles

2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Kauffman's mechanism assumes: (i) a large set of abundant food molecules from which members of the set are produced; (ii) molecules have a certain probability of catalysing the production of other molecules; and (iii) each species in the set is reflexively autocatalytic (Farmer et al, 1986;Bagley and Farmer, 1991). These are not the conditions at the end of the Miller experiment, which although containing polymers of amino acids, does not seem to contain polymer replicators in high abundance.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Natural selection in chemical evolution

Fernando

Rowe

2007

Journal of Theoretical Biology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We propose that chemical evolution can take place by natural selection if a geophysical process is capable of heterotrophic formation of liposomes that grow at some base rate, divide by external agitation, and are subject to stochastic chemical avalanches, in the absence of nucleotides or any monomers capable of modular heredity. We model this process using a simple hill-climbing algorithm, and an artificial chemistry that is unique in exhibiting conservation of mass and energy in an open thermodynamic system. Selection at the liposome level results in the stabilization of rarely occurring molecular autocatalysts that either catalyse or are consumed in reactions that confer liposome level fitness; typically they contribute in parallel to an increasingly conserved intermediary metabolism. Loss of competing autocatalysts can sometimes be adaptive. Steady-state energy flux by the individual increases due to the energetic demands of growth, but also of memory, i.e. maintaining variations in the chemical network. Self-organizing principles such as those proposed by Kauffman, Fontana, and Morowitz have been hypothesized as an ordering principle in chemical evolution, rather than chemical evolution by natural selection. We reject those notions as either logically flawed or at best insufficient in the absence of natural selection. Finally, a finite population model without elitism shows the practical evolutionary constraints for achieving chemical evolution by natural selection in the lab. r

show abstract

“…the simultaneous existence of the car and of alcohol directly leads to the invention of the air bag). This auto-catalytic process is a very general process [1][2][3][4] and obviously applies to many situations not only related to innovation, but also to evolution, opinion formation, food chains etc. One may even think of the dynamics of scientific ideas, music genres, or any other field where the emergence of a new element possibly leads to new combinations and new elements.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Unanimity rule on networks

2007

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. -We introduce a model for innovation-, evolution-and opinion dynamics whose spreading is dictated by unanimity rules, i.e. a node will change its (binary) state only if all of its neighbours have the same corresponding state. It is shown that a transition takes place depending on the initial condition of the problem. In particular, a critical number of initially activated nodes is needed so that the whole system gets activated in the long-time limit. The influence of the degree distribution of the nodes is naturally taken into account. For simple network topologies we solve the model analytically, the cases of random, small-world and scale-free are studied in detail.

show abstract

Autocatalytic replication of polymers

Cited by 218 publications

References 13 publications

Colloquium : Toward living matter with colloidal particles

Colloquium : Toward living matter with colloidal particles

Natural selection in chemical evolution

Unanimity rule on networks

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About