Ice as a protocellular medium for RNA replication

Low-Surface-Energy Photoresist as a Medium for Optical Replication

In these applications, a master surface relief is created by exposing photoresist through a suitably designed grayscaleintensity mask. Development of the resist produces a profiled surface according to the mask transmittance and exposure. Components can be replicated from this master by contact molding; this requires a release layer to insure the master and replicant can be separated without da...

Hydrogen peroxide thermochemical oscillator as driver for primordial RNA replication.

This paper presents and tests a previously unrecognized mechanism for driving a replicating molecular system on the prebiotic earth. It is proposed that cell-free RNA replication in the primordial soup may have been driven by self-sustained oscillatory thermochemical reactions. To test this hypothesis, a well-characterized hydrogen peroxide oscillator was chosen as the driver and complementary ...

Emergence of protocellular growth laws.

Template-directed replication is known to obey a parabolic growth law due to product inhibition (Sievers & Von Kiedrowski 1994 Nature 369, 221; Lee et al. 1996 Nature 382, 525; Varga & Szathmáry 1997 Bull. Math. Biol. 59, 1145). We investigate a template-directed replication with a coupled template catalysed lipid aggregate production as a model of a minimal protocell and show analytically that...

Molecular modeling of protocellular functions.

The mechanisms of three protocellular functions have been studied using molecular modeling techniques. These functions are (1) the transport of ions across membranes, (2) the formation of photoactivated proton gradient that could drive chemical synthesis in the protocell, and (3) the organization of small peptides necessary for catalytic activity. In all these processes, membranes play an essen...

A Modified Orcinol Reaction for RNA Determination