Abstract
BackgroundIn previous work, RAF theory has been developed as a tool for making theoretical progress on the origin of life question, providing insight into the structure and occurrence of self-sustaining and collectively autocatalytic sets within catalytic polymer networks. We present here an extension in which there are two “independent” polymer sets, where catalysis occurs within and between the sets, but there are no reactions combining polymers from both sets. Such an extension reflects the interaction between nucleic acids and peptides observed in modern cells and proposed forms of early life.ResultsWe present theoretical work and simulations which suggest that the occurrence of autocatalytic sets is robust to the partitioned structure of the network. We also show that autocatalytic sets remain likely even when the molecules in the system are not polymers, and a low level of inhibition is present. Finally, we present a kinetic extension which assigns a rate to each reaction in the system, and show that identifying autocatalytic sets within such a system is an NP-complete problem.ConclusionsRecent experimental work has challenged the necessity of an RNA world by suggesting that peptide-nucleic acid interactions occurred early in chemical evolution. The present work indicates that such a peptide-RNA world could support the spontaneous development of autocatalytic sets and is thus a feasible alternative worthy of investigation.
Highlights
In previous work, RAF theory has been developed as a tool for making theoretical progress on the origin of life question, providing insight into the structure and occurrence of self-sustaining and collectively autocatalytic sets within catalytic polymer networks
We present theoretical results showing that RAF sets are just as likely to emerge in such systems as in those previously studied [14], and it turns out that the result holds even for a more general system in which the molecules are not necessarily polymers, a small amount of inhibition is allowed, and the amount of catalysis varies freely across the reaction network
As a step toward increased chemical realism, we introduce the concept of a kinetic chemical reaction system, in which every reaction has an associated rate, and all molecules are lost via diffusion into the environment at a constant rate
Summary
We present theoretical work and simulations which suggest that the occurrence of autocatalytic sets is robust to the partitioned structure of the network. We show that autocatalytic sets remain likely even when the molecules in the system are not polymers, and a low level of inhibition is present. We present a kinetic extension which assigns a rate to each reaction in the system, and show that identifying autocatalytic sets within such a system is an NP-complete problem
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