Reproduction of a Protocell by Replication of Minority Molecule in Catalytic Reaction Network

Abstract

For understanding the origin of life, it is essential to explain the development of a compartmentalized structure, which undergoes growth and division, from a set of chemical reactions. In this study, a hypercycle with two chemicals that mutually catalyze each other is considered in order to show that the reproduction of a protocell with a growth-division process naturally occurs when the replication speed of one chemical is considerably slower than that of the other chemical. It is observed that the protocell divides after a minority molecule is replicated at a slow synthesis rate, and thus, a synchrony between the reproduction of a cell and molecule replication is achieved. The robustness of such protocells against the invasion of parasitic molecules is also demonstrated.

13 pages, 7 figures, submitted for publication

References in corpus (3)

• Zipf's Law in Gene Expression
• Recursiveness, Switching, and Fluctuations in a Replicating Catalytic Network
• Discreteness-induced Stochastic Steady State in Reaction Diffusion Systems: Self-consistent Analysis and Stochastic Simulations

Cited by in corpus (4)

• How causal analysis can reveal autonomy in models of biological systems
• The origin of large molecules in primordial autocatalytic reaction networks
• Inverse Relationship Between Molecular Diversity And Resource Abundances
• Exponential growth for self-reproduction in a catalytic reaction network: relevance of a minority molecular species and crowdedness