The ability of systems of molecular reactions to be simultaneously autocatalylic and sustained by some ambient 'food source' of simple molecules may have been an essential step in the origin of life. In this paper we first describe a polynomial-time algorithm that determines whether any given set of molecules, reactions and catalysations contains a subsystem that is both autocatalytic and able ...

This paper describes a model system for studying the autocatalytic phosphorylation of an immobilized substrate by a kinase enzyme. This work uses self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) of alkanethiolates on gold to present the peptide substrate on a planar surface. Treatment of the monolayer with Abl kinase results in phosphorylation of the substrate. The phosphorylated peptide then serves as a ligan...

A particular class of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) describing catalyzed, template-induced, and erroneous replication is investigated. The ODEs can be split into a replicator part accounting for the correct replication and a mutation term accounting for all miscopying processes. The set of all species is divided into the catalytically active "viable" species and an error tail subsuming...

An autocatalytic reacting system with particles interacting at a finite distance is studied. We investigate the effects of the discrete-particle character of the model on properties like reaction rate, quenching phenomenon, and front propagation, focusing on differences with respect to the continuous case. We introduce a renormalized reaction rate depending both on the interaction radius and th...

A mathematical reaction-diffusion model is defined to describe the gradual decomposition of polymer microspheres composed of poly(D,L-lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) that are used for pharmaceutical drug delivery over extended periods of time. The partial differential equation (PDE) model treats simultaneous first-order generation due to chemical reaction and diffusion of reaction products in s...

The kinetics of N2O decomposition to gaseous nitrogen and oxygen over HZSM-5 catalysts with low content of iron (<400 ppm) under transient and steady-state conditions was investigated in the temperature range of 250–380 8C. The catalysts were prepared from the HZSM-5 with Fe in the framework upon steaming at 550 8C followed by thermal activation in He at 1050 8C. The N2O decomposition began at ...

It was shown on the Frank autocatalytic reaction-diffusion scheme that strong environmental fluctuations, conditioned by external noise (e.g. sunlight fluctuation) and external macroscopic flows (e.g. ebb and flow), typical for conditions on prebiotic earth, may have been beneficial for chiral symmetry breaking and formation and stabilization of biomolecular homochirality.

To describe and predict the leaching of Ag, Cu Sn from waste photovoltaic modules with an electrochemical-assisted process kinetic investigations were performed. In this process, peroxydisulfate is generated sulfuric acid to oxidize metals. It was found that under reaction conditions peroxymonosulfate formed as well has a major contribution process. For autocatalytic decomposition reagents dete...

Autocatalytic reaction system with a small number of molecules is studied numerically by stochastic particle simulations. A novel state due to fluctuation and discreteness in molecular numbers is found, characterized as extinction of molecule species alternately in the autocatalytic reaction loop. Phase transition to this state with the change of the system size and flow is studied, while a sin...

Given any finite and closed chemical reaction system, it is possible to efficiently determine whether or not it contains a ‘self-sustaining and collectively autocatalytic’ subset of reactions, and to find such subsets when they exist. However, for systems that are potentially open-ended (for example, when no prescribed upper bound is placed on the complexity or size/length of molecules types), ...