On Code-Prompting Auto-Catalytic Sets and the Origins of Coded Life

I. Fayerverker, T. Mor

2018

Abstract

The genetic code and genetic evolution are at the core of complexity in biology, however, there is no reasonable explanation yet for the emergence of the genetic code. We present here a possible scenario accounting for the emergence of “coded life” in nature: We describe the emergence of the genetic code from molecular evolution, prior to genetic evolution, in a chemical era in which all the molecules were still located within (probably non-biological) compartments. Our scenario is obtained by combining the conceptual idea of “code-prompting autocatalytic sets” (Agmon and Mor, 2015), with recent results about non-enzymatic template replication methods (Prywes et al, 2016), possibly relevant to the prebiotic stage preceding RNA-world. In the scenario described here, we often use computer science viewpoint and abstraction: We consider sets of strings composed of letters, such that each letter represents a molecular building block—mainly nucleotides and amino acids, and each string represents a more complex molecule which is some concatenation of the simpler molecules represented by letters; the biochemical rules are described in an abstract language of rules and statistics of letters and strings. We then suggest a novel path, containing several phases, for the emergence of “coded life”.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Fayerverker I. and Mor T. (2018). On Code-Prompting Auto-Catalytic Sets and the Origins of Coded Life.In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Complexity, Future Information Systems and Risk - Volume 1: COMPLEXIS, ISBN 978-989-758-297-4, pages 53-63. DOI: 10.5220/0006681300530063

in Bibtex Style

@conference{complexis18,
author={I. Fayerverker and T. Mor},
title={On Code-Prompting Auto-Catalytic Sets and the Origins of Coded Life},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Complexity, Future Information Systems and Risk - Volume 1: COMPLEXIS,},
year={2018},
pages={53-63},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0006681300530063},
isbn={978-989-758-297-4},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Complexity, Future Information Systems and Risk - Volume 1: COMPLEXIS,
TI - On Code-Prompting Auto-Catalytic Sets and the Origins of Coded Life
SN - 978-989-758-297-4
AU - Fayerverker I.
AU - Mor T.
PY - 2018
SP - 53
EP - 63
DO - 10.5220/0006681300530063