Energy-harnessing problem solving of primordial life: Modeling the emergence of catalytic host-nested parasite life cycles.

ABSTRACT: All life forms on earth ultimately descended from a primordial population dubbed the last universal common ancestor or LUCA via Darwinian evolution. Extant living systems share two salient functional features, a metabolism extracting and transforming energy required for survival, and an evolvable, informational polymer-the genome-conferring heredity. Genome replication invariably generates essential and ubiquitous genetic parasites. Here we model the energetic, replicative conditions of LUCA-like organisms and their parasites, as well as adaptive problem solving of host-parasite pairs. We show using an adapted Lotka-Volterra frame-work that three host-parasite pairs-individually a unit of a host and a parasite that is itself parasitized, therefore a nested parasite pair-are sufficient for

SUBMITTER: Conrad B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10042343 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature