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Discrete dynamic system oriented on the formation of prebiotic dipeptides from Rode's experiment

100%

Polanco C., Samaniego J., Buhse T., Castañón González J.

2014

vol. 61

issue 4

717-726

This work attempts to rationalize the possible prebiotic profile of the first dipeptides of about 4 billion years ago based on a computational discrete dynamic system that uses the final yields of the dipeptides obtained in Rode's experiments of salt-induced peptide formation (Rode et al., 1999, Peptides 20: 773-786). The system built a prebiotic scenario that allowed us to observe that (i) the primordial peptide generation was strongly affected by the abundances of the amino acid monomers, (ii) small variations in the concentration of the monomers have almost no effect on the final distribution pattern of the dipeptides and (iii) the most plausible chemical reaction of prebiotic peptide bond formation can be linked to Rode's hypothesis of a salt-induced scenario. The results of our computational simulations were related to former simulations of the Miller, and Fox & Harada experiments on amino acid monomer and oligomer generation, respectively, offering additional information to our approach.

Computational model of abiogenic amino acid condensation to obtain a polar amino acid profile

88%

Polanco C., Buhse T., Samaniego J., Castañón González J., Estrada M.

2014

vol. 61

issue 2

253-258

In accordance with the second law of thermodynamics, the Universe as a whole tends to higher entropy. However, the sequence of far-from-equilibrium events that led to the emergence of life on Earth could have imposed order and complexity during the course of chemical reactions in the so-called primordial soup of life. Hence, we may expect to find characteristic profiles or biases in the prebiotic product mixtures, as for instance among the first amino acids. Seeking to shed light on this hypothesis, we have designed a high performance computer program that simulates the spontaneous formation of the amino acid monomers in closed environments. The program was designed in reference to a prebiotic scenario proposed by Sydney W. Fox. The amino acid abundances and their polarities as the two principal biases were also taken into consideration. We regarded the computational model as exhaustive since 200 000 amino acid dimers were formed by simulation, subsequently expressed in a vector and compared with the corresponding amino acid dimers that were experimentally obtained by Fox. We found a very high similarity between the experimental results and our simulations.

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2 Acta Biochimica Polonica

2 2014

2 Buhse T.

2 Castañón González J.

2 Polanco C.

2 Samaniego J.

1 Estrada M.

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Discrete dynamic system oriented on the formation of prebiotic dipeptides from Rode's experiment

Computational model of abiogenic amino acid condensation to obtain a polar amino acid profile