ArticleEntropy (Basel, Switzerland)2021
Constraint Closure Drove Major Transitions in the Origins of Life.
Article in Entropy (Basel, Switzerland), 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 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.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Review
- Is the emergence of life and of agency expected?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Origin & influence of autocatalytic reaction networks at the advent of the RNA world.RNA biology · 2024Review
- Mixed anhydrides at the intersection between peptide and RNA autocatalytic sets: evolution of biological coding.Interface focus · 2023Article
- Free energy and inference in living systems.Interface focus · 2023Article
- Super-Exponential Growth in Models of a Binary String World.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Schrödinger and the Possible Existence of Different Types of Life.Frontiers in microbiology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Life is an epiphenomenon for which origins are of tremendous interest to explain. We provide a framework for doing so based on the thermodynamic concept of work cycles. These cycles can create their own closure events, and thereby provide a mechanism for engendering novelty. We note that three significant such events led to life as we know it on Earth: (1) the advent of collective autocatalytic sets (CASs) of small molecules; (2) the advent of CASs of reproducing informational polymers; and (3) the advent of CASs of polymerase replicases. Each step could occur only when the boundary conditions of the system fostered constraints that fundamentally changed the phase space. With the realization that these successive events are required for innovative forms of life, we may now be able to focus more clearly on the question of life's abundance in the universe.
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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.