Self-organization of primitive metabolic cycles due to non-reciprocal interactions

Vincent Ouazan-Reboul, Jaime Agudo-Canalejo and Ramin Golestanian ()
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Vincent Ouazan-Reboul: Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization
Jaime Agudo-Canalejo: Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization
Ramin Golestanian: Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization

Nature Communications, 2023, vol. 14, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract One of the greatest mysteries concerning the origin of life is how it has emerged so quickly after the formation of the earth. In particular, it is not understood how metabolic cycles, which power the non-equilibrium activity of cells, have come into existence in the first instances. While it is generally expected that non-equilibrium conditions would have been necessary for the formation of primitive metabolic structures, the focus has so far been on externally imposed non-equilibrium conditions, such as temperature or proton gradients. Here, we propose an alternative paradigm in which naturally occurring non-reciprocal interactions between catalysts that can partner together in a cyclic reaction lead to their recruitment into self-organized functional structures. We uncover different classes of self-organized cycles that form through exponentially rapid coarsening processes, depending on the parity of the cycle and the nature of the interaction motifs, which are all generic but have readily tuneable features.

Date: 2023
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-40241-w

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