Category: Uncategorized

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE considers the evolution of the stuff that life is made of, namely carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur, also called the biogenic elements, the primary elements of life. Where did these elements come from, and how were they made? View in LinkedIn

SONG OF DARWIN. "The more I study nature, the more I become impressed […] that the contrivances and beautiful adaptations [acquired through natural selection] transcend in an incomparable degree [those] which the most fertile imagination of the most imaginative man could suggest with unlimited time at his disposal." http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982214003881 View in LinkedIn

"A CHEMICAL BESTIARY is similar to concepts of in silico evolution. This was an artificial selection experiment." https://lnkd.in/euzMX5X View in LinkedIn

CHEMICAL INHERITANCE. "Thus, our autocatalytic networks are capable of stably transmitting information across generations." https://lnkd.in/euzMX5X View in LinkedIn

COMPARTMENTAL GROWTH. "The viable cores could be considered the units that replicate and, once transmitted to the offspring compartments after the parental compartment splits (reproduces), they give raise to the same periphery; that is; there is a clear matching between a viable core ('genotype') and the periphery ('phenotype')." https://lnkd.in/euzMX5X View in LinkedIn

CHEMICAL UNITS OF EVOLUTION. "It should come as no surprise, our finding that independent viable autocatalytic cores embedded in a large molecular network can be considered as units of evolution, since the basic ingredients of differential growth rates and division times among potentially competing entities are fulfilled." https://lnkd.in/euzMX5X View in LinkedIn

MINIMAL RULES. "We demonstrate that for a catalytic network to accumulate adaptations it needs to be compartmentalized, the platonic reaction network must have multiple attractors, and some of these attractors must be selectable. The larger the number of attractors, the smaller the chance of convergence." https://lnkd.in/euzMX5X View in LinkedIn

POOR MAN'S NATURAL SELECTION. "Acquisition of cores by rare chemical events, and loss of cores at division, allows macromutation, limited heredity and selectability, thus explaining how a poor man's natural selection could have operated prior to genetic templates." https://lnkd.in/euzMX5X View in LinkedIn

CHEMICAL NETWORK CORES. "When many cores are enclosed in a compartment there is competition between cores within the same compartment, and when there are many compartments, there is between-compartment competition due to the phenotypic effects of cores and their periphery at the compartment level." https://lnkd.in/euzMX5X View in LinkedIn

CHEMICAL BESTIARY. "We conclude that only when a chemical reaction network consists of many such viable cores, can it be evolvable." https://lnkd.in/euzMX5X View in LinkedIn