Browse
Submit Data
Databases
API
Help

Dataset Information

67 Views

0 Connections

0 Citations

0 Reanalyses

0 Downloads

Omics score: 0

A chemically fuelled self-replicator.

ABSTRACT: The continuous consumption of chemical energy powers biological systems so that they can operate functional supramolecular structures. A goal of modern science is to understand how simple chemical mixtures may transition from non-living components to truly emergent systems and the production of new lifelike materials and machines. In this work a replicator can be maintained out-of-equilibrium by the continuous consumption of chemical energy. The system is driven by the autocatalytic formation of a metastable surfactant whose breakdown products are converted back into building blocks by a chemical fuel. The consumption of fuel allows the high-energy replicators to persist at a steady state, much like a simple metabolic cycle. Thermodynamically-driven reactions effect a unidirectional substrate flux as the system tries to regain equilibrium. The metastable replicator persists at a higher concentration than achieved even transiently in a closed system, and its concentration is responsive to the rate of fuel supply.

SUBMITTER: Morrow SM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6397266 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Json Xml

Publications

A chemically fuelled self-replicator.

Morrow Sarah M SM Colomer Ignacio I Fletcher Stephen P SP

Nature communications 20190301 1

The continuous consumption of chemical energy powers biological systems so that they can operate functional supramolecular structures. A goal of modern science is to understand how simple chemical mixtures may transition from non-living components to truly emergent systems and the production of new lifelike materials and machines. In this work a replicator can be maintained out-of-equilibrium by the continuous consumption of chemical energy. The system is driven by the autocatalytic formation of ...[more]

PMID: 30824804

Similar Datasets

Template-based copying in chemically fuelled dynamic combinatorial libraries.

Project description:One of science's greatest challenges is determining how life can spontaneously emerge from a mixture of molecules. A complicating factor is that life and its molecules are inherently unstable-RNA and proteins are prone to hydrolysis and denaturation. For the de novo synthesis of life or to better understand its emergence at its origin, selection mechanisms are needed for unstable molecules. Here we present a chemically fuelled dynamic combinatorial library to model RNA oligomerization and deoligomerization and shine new light on selection and purification mechanisms under kinetic control. In the experiments, oligomers can only be sustained by continuous production. Hybridization is a powerful tool for selecting unstable molecules, offering feedback on oligomerization and deoligomerization rates. Moreover, we find that templation can be used to purify libraries of oligomers. In addition, template-assisted formation of oligomers within coacervate-based protocells changes its compartment's physical properties, such as their ability to fuse. Such reciprocal coupling between oligomer production and physical properties is a key step towards synthetic life.

| S-EPMC11321992 | biostudies-literature

Light-fuelled freestyle self-oscillators.

Project description:Self-oscillation is a phenomenon where an object sustains periodic motion upon non-periodic stimulus. It occurs commonly in nature, a few examples being heartbeat, sea waves and fluttering of leaves. Stimuli-responsive materials allow creating synthetic self-oscillators fuelled by different forms of energy, e.g. heat, light and chemicals, showing great potential for applications in power generation, autonomous mass transport, and self-propelled micro-robotics. However, most of the self-oscillators are based on bending deformation, thereby limiting their possibilities of being implemented in practical applications. Here, we report light-fuelled self-oscillators based on liquid crystal network actuators that can exhibit three basic oscillation modes: bending, twisting and contraction-expansion. We show that a time delay in material response dictates the self-oscillation dynamics, and realize a freestyle self-oscillator that combines numerous oscillation modes simultaneously by adjusting the excitation beam position. The results provide new insights into understanding of self-oscillation phenomenon and offer new designs for future self-propelling micro-robots.

| S-EPMC6838320 | biostudies-literature

A transient self-assembling self-replicator.

Project description:Developing physical models of complex dynamic systems showing emergent behaviour is key to informing on persistence and replication in biology, how living matter emerges from chemistry, and how to design systems with new properties. Herein we report a fully synthetic small molecule system in which a surfactant replicator is formed from two phase-separated reactants using an alkene metathesis catalyst. The replicator self-assembles into aggregates, which catalyse their own formation, and is thermodynamically unstable. Rather than replicating until the reactants are fully consumed, the metastable replicator is depleted in a second metathesis reaction, and closed system equilibrium is eventually reached. Mechanistic experiments suggest phase separation is responsible for both replicator formation and destruction.

| S-EPMC5993787 | biostudies-other

Reciprocal Nucleopeptides as the Ancestral Darwinian Self-Replicator.

Project description:Even the simplest organisms are too complex to have spontaneously arisen fully formed, yet precursors to first life must have emerged ab initio from their environment. A watershed event was the appearance of the first entity capable of evolution: the Initial Darwinian Ancestor. Here, we suggest that nucleopeptide reciprocal replicators could have carried out this important role and contend that this is the simplest way to explain extant replication systems in a mathematically consistent way. We propose short nucleic acid templates on which amino-acylated adapters assembled. Spatial localization drives peptide ligation from activated precursors to generate phosphodiester-bond-catalytic peptides. Comprising autocatalytic protein and nucleic acid sequences, this dynamical system links and unifies several previous hypotheses and provides a plausible model for the emergence of DNA and the operational code.

| S-EPMC5850689 | biostudies-literature

Emergence of a New Self-Replicator from a Dynamic Combinatorial Library Requires a Specific Pre-Existing Replicator.

Project description:Our knowledge regarding the early steps in the formation of evolvable life and what constitutes the minimal molecular basis of life remains far from complete. The recent emergence of systems chemistry reinvigorated the investigation of systems of self-replicating molecules to address these questions. Most of these studies focus on single replicators and the effects of replicators on the emergence of other replicators remains under-investigated. Here we show the cross-catalyzed emergence of a novel self-replicator from a dynamic combinatorial library made from a threonine containing peptide building block, which, by itself, only forms trimers and tetramers that do not replicate. Upon seeding of this library with different replicators of different macrocycle size (hexamers and octamers), we observed the emergence of hexamer replicator consisting of six units of the threonine peptide only when it is seeded with an octamer replicator containing eight units of a serine building block. These results reveal for the first time how a new replicator can emerge in a process that relies critically on the assistance by another replicator through cross-catalysis and that replicator composition is history dependent.

| S-EPMC5632813 | biostudies-literature

A Chemically Fuelled Molecular Automaton Displaying Programmed Migration of Zn<sup>2+</sup> Between Alternative Binding Sites.

Project description:A molecular system comprising a cationic zinc complex and an amino acid-derived ambident ligand having phosphate and carboxylate binding sites undergoes a series of rearrangements in which the metal cation migrates autonomously from one site to another. The location of the metal is identified by the circular dichroism spectrum of a ligated bis(2-quinolylmethyl)-(2-pyridylmethyl)amine (BQPA) chromophore, which takes a characteristic shape at each binding site. Migration is fuelled by the decomposition of trichloroacetic acid to CO2 and CHCl3 , which progressively neutralises the acidity of the system as a function of time, revealing in sequence binding sites of increasing basicity. The migration rate responds to control by variation of the temperature, water content and triethylamine concentration, while an excess of fuel controls the duration of an induction period before the migration event.

| S-EPMC9804598 | biostudies-literature

Models of Replicator Proliferation Involving Differential Replicator Subunit Stability.

Project description:Several models for the origin of life involve molecules that are capable of self-replication, such as self-replicating polymers composed of RNA or DNA or amino acids. Here we consider a hypothetical replicator (AB) composed of two subunits, A and B. Programs written in Python and C programming languages were used to model AB replicator abundance as a function of cycles of replication (iterations), under specified hypothetical conditions. Two non-exclusive models describe how a reduced stability for B relative to A can have an advantage for replicator activity and/or evolution by generating free A subunits. In model 1, free A subunits associate with AB replicators to create AAB replicators with greater activity. In simulations, reduced stability of B was beneficial when the replication activity of AAB was greater than two times the replication activity of AB. In model 2, the free A subunit is inactive for some number of iterations before it re-creates the B subunit. A re-creates the B subunit with an equal chance of creating B or B', where B' is a mutant that increases AB' replicator activity relative to AB. In simulations, at moderate number of iterations (< 15), a shorter survival time for B is beneficial when the stability of B is greater than the inactive time of A. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that reduced stability for a replicator subunit can be advantageous under appropriate conditions.

| S-EPMC6237645 | biostudies-literature

ATP-fuelled self-assembly to regulate chemical reactivity in the time domain.

Project description:Here, we exploit a small biomolecule - ATP - to gain temporal control over chemical reactivity in a synthetic system composed of small self-assembling molecules and reactants. The approach relies on the capacity of ATP to template the formation of amphiphile-based assemblies. The presence of the enzyme alkaline phosphatase causes a gradual decrease in the ATP-concentration in time and, consequently, a spontaneous dissociation of the assemblies. The uptake of apolar reactants in the hydrophobic domain of the assemblies leads to an enhancement of the reaction rate. It is shown that ATP-triggered self-assembly causes the selective upregulation of one out of two hydrazone-bond formation reactions that take place concurrently in the system. This leads to an inversion in the product ratio, which, however, is transient in nature because the upregulated reaction spontaneously reverts to its basal low reaction rate once the ATP has been consumed by the enzyme. Overall, the results demonstrate the potential of chemically-fuelled self-assembly under dissipative conditions to gain temporal control over reactivity in complex chemical systems.

| S-EPMC8148039 | biostudies-literature

Variations in the fuel structure control the rate of the back and forth motions of a chemically fuelled molecular switch.

Project description:This work deals with the use of 2-cyano-2-arylpropanoic acids as chemical fuels for an acid-base operated molecular switch that consists of a Sauvage-type catenand composed of two identical macrocycles incorporating a phenanthroline unit. When used as a base promoter of the decarboxylation of propanoic acid derivatives, the switch undergoes large amplitude motion from the neutral catenand to a protonated catenate and back again to the neutral state. The rate of back proton transfer, which determines the rate of the overall process, was markedly affected by para-substituents in the order Cl > H > CH3 > OCH3 (? = +5.2). Thus, the time required to complete a full cycle was almost two days for the OCH3 derivative and dropped to a few minutes for the Cl derivative. These results show for the first time that the rate of operation of a molecular switch can be regulated by variations in the fuel structure.

| S-EPMC5869305 | biostudies-literature

Evolutionary transition from a single RNA replicator to a multiple replicator network.

Project description:In prebiotic evolution, self-replicating molecules are believed to have evolved into complex living systems by expanding their information and functions open-endedly. Theoretically, such evolutionary complexification could occur through successive appearance of novel replicators that interact with one another to form replication networks. Here we perform long-term evolution experiments of RNA that replicates using a self-encoded RNA replicase. The RNA diversifies into multiple coexisting host and parasite lineages, whose frequencies in the population initially fluctuate and gradually stabilize. The final population, comprising five RNA lineages, forms a replicator network with diverse interactions, including cooperation to help the replication of all other members. These results support the capability of molecular replicators to spontaneously develop complexity through Darwinian evolution, a critical step for the emergence of life.

| S-EPMC8933500 | biostudies-literature

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

OmicsDI is an Elixir interoperability service. Learn more ›

Tweets

OmicsDI Databases

PRIDE
PeptideAtlas
MassIVE
JPOST Repository
Physiome Model Repository

EGA
EVA
ENA
LINCS
PAXDB
Cell Collective

MetaboLights
Metabolomics Workbench
MetabolomeExpress
GNPS
BioModels
FAIRDOMHub

ArrayExpress
dbGaP
ExpressionAtlas
GEO
NODE

Information

Databases
Help
API
Contact us
Code on GitHub
Terms of use
Submit Data