Compositional persistence in a multicyclic network of synthetic replicators
Abstract
The emergence of collections of simple chemical entities that create self-sustaining reaction networks, embedding replication and catalysis, is cited as a potential mechanism for the appearance on the early Earth of systems that satisfy minimal definitions of life. In this work, a functional reaction network that creates and maintains a set of privileged replicator structures through auto- and cross-catalyzed reaction cycles is created from the pairwise combinations of four reagents. We show that the addition of individual preformed templates to this network, representing instructions to synthesize a specific replicator, induces changes in the output composition of the system that represent a network-level response. Further, we establish through sets of serial transfer experiments that the catalytic connections that exist between the four replicators in this network and the system-level behavior thereby encoded impose limits on the compositional variability that can be induced by repeated exposure to instructional inputs, in the form of preformed templates, to the system. The origin of this persistence is traced through kinetic simulations to the properties and inter-relationships between the critical ternary complexes formed by the auto- and crosscatalytic templates. These results demonstrate that in an environment where there is no continuous selection pressure, the network connectivity, described by the catalytic relationships and system-level interactions between the replicators, is persistent, thereby limiting the ability of this network to adapt and evolve.
Citation
Huck , J , Kosikova , T & Philp , D 2019 , ' Compositional persistence in a multicyclic network of synthetic replicators ' , Journal of the American Chemical Society , vol. 141 , no. 35 , pp. 13905-13913 . https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.9b06697
Publication
Journal of the American Chemical Society
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0002-7863Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2019 American Chemical Society. This work has been made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created, accepted version manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.9b06697
Description
This work was supported by the award of a Postgraduate Studentship from Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/K503162/1) to TK and by the University of St Andrews.Collections
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.