Design principles, growth laws, and competition of minimal autocatalysts.

ABSTRACT: The difficulty of designing simple autocatalysts that grow exponentially in the absence of enzymes, external drives or ingenious internal mechanisms severely constrains scenarios for the emergence of evolution by natural selection in chemical and physical systems. Here, we systematically analyze these difficulties in the simplest and most generic autocatalyst: a dimeric molecule that duplicates by templated ligation. We show that despite its simplicity, such an autocatalyst can achieve exponential growth autonomously. We also show, however, that it is possible to design as simple sub-exponential autocatalysts that have an advantage over exponential autocatalysts when competing for a common resource. We reach these conclusions by developing a theoretical framework based on kinetic barrier d

SUBMITTER: Sakref Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11494078 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature