A critical phenomenon approach of biogenesis

Constantino Tsallis and Ricardo Ferreira

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 1986, vol. 140, issue 1, 336-348

Abstract: A fundamental prebiotic stage of the origin of life is the formation, from a random assembly of oligomers, of information-containing self-replicating polymers. By adopting a growth mechanism (already used by Anderson and others) essentially based in the complementarity of the Crick and Watson base-pairs, we show that this stage may have occurred as a critical phenomenon. Within a simple real-space renormalization group framework we calculate the relevant critical lines, which are different for different sequences of base-pairs. The picture incorporates in a natural way Darwinian-like evolution, is consistent with reasonable nucleotide ratios (A + T)(C + G) and suggest that polymers like ADN double-chains are more primitive than proteins.

Date: 1986
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:140:y:1986:i:1:p:336-348

DOI: 10.1016/0378-4371(86)90240-2

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Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications is currently edited by K. A. Dawson, J. O. Indekeu, H.E. Stanley and C. Tsallis

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