But it was not possible to explain this all that well in the time limit
of ten minutes. What is missing from the talk is that the aggregate of
percolation clusters of organics ends up implementing a very
sophisticated machine learning system that ends up building the
machinery of life step by step. But that's way too technical to explain
in a conference talk, I'll have to do that in a paper.
Video: https://vimeo.com/458077141
Abstract:
https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EPSC2020/EPSC2020-785.html
The mathematician John von Neumann, through his work on universal
constructors, discovered
a generalized version of the central dogma of molecular biology biology
in the 1940s, long
before the biological version had been discovered. While his discovery
played no role in the
development of molecular biology, we may benefit from a similar
mathematical approach to find
clues on the origin of life. This then involves addressing those
problems in the field that
do not depend on the details of organic chemistry. We can then consider
a general set of
models that describe machines capable of self-maintenance and
self-replication formulated in
terms of a set of building blocks and their interactions.
The analogue of the origin of life problem is then to explain how one
can get to such
machines starting from a set of only building blocks. A fundamental
obstacle one then faces
is the limit on the complexity of low fidelity replicating systems,
preventing building
blocks from getting assembled randomly into low fidelity machines which
can then improve due
to natural selection [1]. A generic way out of this problem is for the
entire ecosystem of
machines to have been encapsulated in a micro-structure with fixed inner
surface features
that would have boosted the fidelity [2]. Such micro-structures could
have formed as a result
of the random assembly of building blocks, leading to so-called
percolation clusters [2].
This then leads us to consider how in the real world a percolation
process involving the
random assembly of organic molecules can be realized. A well studied
process in the
literature is the assembly of organic compounds in ice grains due to UV
radiation and heating
events [3,4,5]. This same process will also lead to the percolation
process if it proceeds
for a sufficiently long period [2].
In this talk I will discuss the percolation process in more detail than
has been done in [2],
explaining how it leads to the necessary symmetry breakings such as the
origin of chiral
molecules needed to explain the origin of life.
[1] Eigen, M., 1971. Self-organization of matter and the evolution of
biological
macromolecules. Naturwissenschaften 58, 465-523.
[2] Mitra, S., 2019. Percolation clusters of organics in interstellar
ice grains as the
incubators of life, Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology 149,
33-38.
[3] Ciesla, F., and Sandford.,S., 2012. Organic Synthesis via
Irradiation and Warming of Ice
Grains in the Solar Nebula. Science 336, 452-454.
[4] Muñoz Caro, G., et al., 2002. Amino acids from ultraviolet
irradiation of interstellar ice
analogues. Nature 416, 403-406.
[5] Meinert, C,., et al., 2016. Ribose and related sugars from
ultraviolet irradiation of
interstellar ice analogs. Science 352, 208-212.
Saibal
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