ArticleJournal of molecular evolution2017
Chemical Evolution and the Evolutionary Definition of Life.
Article in Journal of molecular evolution, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
31 citing papers in PubMed.
- Light-Driven Competitive Selection in a Protein-Catalyzed Dissipative Peptide Replication.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2026Article
- Evolution from Composome to RNA Replicase.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- From experimental clues to theoretical modeling: Evolution associated with the membrane-takeover at an early stage of life.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Maximum Entropy Production Principle of Thermodynamics for the Birth and Evolution of Life.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Is Life Binary or Gradual?Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- The overlooked evolutionary dynamics of 16S rRNA revises its role as the "gold standard" for bacterial species identification.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- The GARD Prebiotic Reproduction Model Described in Order and Complexity.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Selectively advantageous instability in biotic and pre-biotic systems and implications for evolution and aging.Frontiers in aging · 2024Review
- The ecology-evolution continuum and the origin of life.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2023Article
- Peptide conjugates with polyaromatic hydrocarbons can benefit the activity of catalytic RNAs.Chemical science · 2023Article
- Light-Fueled Primitive Replication and Selection in Biomimetic Chemical Systems.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2023Article
- Order and Complexity in the RNA World.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- A Mutation Threshold for Cooperative Takeover.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- An investigation on [5 fluorouracil and epigallocatechin-3-gallate] complex activity on HT-29 cell death and its stability in gastrointestinal fluid.Oncotarget · 2022Article
- When Is a Reaction Network a Metabolism? Criteria for Simple Metabolisms That Support Growth and Division of Protocells.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Article
- Driving forces in the origins of life.Open biology · 2021Article
- Origin of Life: The Point of No Return.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- Probing mechanical properties and failure mechanisms of fibrils of self-assembling peptides.Nanoscale advances · 2020Article
- Life in The Context of Order and Complexity.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Darwinian evolution requires a mechanism for generation of diversity in a population, and selective differences between individuals that influence reproduction. In biology, diversity is generated by mutations and selective differences arise because of the encoded functions of the sequences (e.g., ribozymes or proteins). Here, I draw attention to a process that I will call chemical evolution, in which the diversity is generated by random chemical synthesis instead of (or in addition to) mutation, and selection acts on physicochemical properties, such as hydrolysis, photolysis, solubility, or surface binding. Chemical evolution applies to short oligonucleotides that can be generated by random polymerization, as well as by template-directed replication, and which may be too short to encode a specific function. Chemical evolution is an important stage on the pathway to life, between the stage of "just chemistry" and the stage of full biological evolution. A mathematical model is presented here that illustrates the differences between these three stages. Chemical evolution leads to much larger differences in molecular concentrations than can be achieved by selection without replication. However, chemical evolution is not open-ended, unlike biological evolution. The ability to undergo Darwinian evolution is often considered to be a defining feature of life. Here, I argue that chemical evolution, although Darwinian, does not quite constitute life, and that a good place to put the conceptual boundary between non-life and life is between chemical and biological evolution.
Indexed as
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.