Polynucleotides — A Class of Self-Organizing Biomolecules

Abstract

The notion of self-organizing systems was created in the forties mainly through the theoretical studies by Turing (1936) and von Neumann (1951). Since that time, interest in problems of self-organization has never ceased. What has changed over the years, however, are the preferred objects of interest: the self-replicative automata, more or less abstract concepts in computational physics have been replaced by experimental systems from various fields. The exciting development of molecular biology and biophysics initiated by the ingenious postulate of the double helical structure of DNA through Watson and Crick (1953) revealed more and more data on the structure and properties of biomolecules. Eigen (1971) applied chemical kinetics to molecular self-organization and formulated a general theory of precellular evolution. Thanks to the pioneering work of Spiegelman (1971) self-replication of RNA, biomolecules closely related to DNA which appear as the genetic material of some bacteriophages, can be studied by the experimental techniques used commonly in physics and chemistry. Darwinian evolution may be investigated now at the molecular level.