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International Conference on Theory and Practice of Natural Computing

TPNC 2015: Theory and Practice of Natural Computing pp 97–108Cite as

A Model for the Emergence of Coded Life

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 9477))

Abstract

In the conceptualization presented here, a possible scenario concerned with the emergence of coded life in nature is inferred from a model that merges computer science concepts with prebiotic chemistry. In this (“digital”) model, sets of strings composed of letters, such that each letter represents a molecular building block, are located within compartments. Some of the sets of strings (together with their reactions) form “autocatalytic sets”. Some of the strings in the autocatalytic sets play the role of catalysts of reactions and others play the role of templates for replication processes.

We find several unique sets of strings, comprised of two types of letters (\(r_i\) and \(p_j\)) representing nucleotides and amino acids (respectively), with some inherent asymmetry in their properties, that prompt the emergence of a code. By identifying such “code prompting” autocatalytic sets, our abstract model suggests novel models for artificial life, and a possible explanation for the emergence and the fixation of the genetic code in life as we know it.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    LUCA is the Last Universal Common Ancestor of all currently living organisms.

  2. 2.

    This is a quote from Koonin and Novozhilov [18].

  3. 3.

    We assume a small number of different letters: there are four r letters and (for example) just four [10, 14] or just ten [22] p letters. See also [11].

  4. 4.

    As is clarified in [28], there are several non-identical definitions of the term ACS; We use here the term ACS to mean precisely what is named “RAF-ACS” in [13].

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Acknolwledgments

TM thanks the Israeli Ministry of Defense Research and Technology Unit. We thank Yuval Elias for fruitful discussions, we thank Yuval Elias and Erez Mor for a lot of help with the Figures, and we thank Itay Fayerverker for several useful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Schulich Chemistry Department, Technion, Haifa, Israel

    Ilana Agmon

  2. Fritz Haber Research Center for Molecular Dynamics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel

    Ilana Agmon

  3. Computer Science Department, Technion, Haifa, Israel

    Tal Mor

Authors
  1. Ilana Agmon
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  2. Tal Mor
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Correspondence to Tal Mor .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Research Group on Mathematical Linguistics, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain

    Adrian-Horia Dediu

  2. European Centre for Soft Computing, Asturias, Spain

    Luis Magdalena

  3. Research Group on Mathematical Linguistics, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain

    Carlos Martín-Vide

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Agmon, I., Mor, T. (2015). A Model for the Emergence of Coded Life. In: Dediu, AH., Magdalena, L., Martín-Vide, C. (eds) Theory and Practice of Natural Computing. TPNC 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9477. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26841-5_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26841-5_8

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-26840-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-26841-5

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