Sustainability of Transient Kinetic Regimes and Origins of Death.

Dmitry Yu Zubarev,Leonardo A Pachón

doi:10.1038/srep20562

Dmitry Yu Zubarev, Leonardo A Pachón

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/srep20562

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Journal: Scientific reports	Publication Date: Feb 1, 2016
Citations: 9	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Harvard University, University of Antioquia

Abstract

It is generally recognized that a distinguishing feature of life is its peculiar capability to avoid equilibration. The origin of this capability and its evolution along the timeline of abiogenesis is not yet understood. We propose to study an analog of this phenomenon that could emerge in non-biological systems. To this end, we introduce the concept of sustainability of transient kinetic regimes. This concept is illustrated via investigation of cooperative effects in an extended system of compartmentalized chemical oscillators under batch and semi-batch conditions. The computational study of a model system shows robust enhancement of lifetimes of the decaying oscillations which translates into the evolution of the survival function of the transient non-equilibrium regime. This model does not rely on any form of replication. Rather, it explores the role of a structured effective environment as a contributor to the system-bath interactions that define non-equilibrium regimes. We implicate the noise produced by the effective environment of a compartmentalized oscillator as the cause of the lifetime extension.

Highlights

It is generally recognized that a distinguishing feature of life is its peculiar capability to avoid equilibration
We introduce the concept of sustainability of transient kinetic regimes
It explores the role of a structured effective environment as a contributor to the system-bath interactions that define non-equilibrium regimes

Summary

Introduction

It is generally recognized that a distinguishing feature of life is its peculiar capability to avoid equilibration. The other is dedicated to establishing driving forces of abiogenesis and abstraction of the general evolutionary principles from their known biochemical realizations Examples of such efforts include, but are not limited to, development of the theory of hypercycles and quasispecies[5] and evolution of chemical kinetics into population dynamics[6], thermodynamic foundations of cellular metabolism[7] and replication[8], information transfer in mutually catalytic systems[9] and, the general area of non-equilibrium thermodynamics[10,11,12,13]. Our general motivation is to identify phenomena that look similar to cell death in prebiological context in the absence of the evolved biochemical systems If identified, they can serve as a foundation for analogical models[17,18] of chemical evolution and enable studies of life-like physical-chemical systems that are not necessarily prebiologically plausible. Our conjecture is that death comes into play in prebiological world as a point of failure of the intrinsic mechanisms that ensure sustainability of the transient kinetic regimes

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