ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2024
Solvent constraints for biopolymer folding and evolution in extraterrestrial environments.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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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
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- An information-theoretic argument for the restriction of the current biological alphabets to 4 nucleotides and 20 amino acids.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Probing the dark energy in the functional protein universe.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Inferring protein-folding mechanisms from natural sequence diversity.Biophysical journal · 2025Article
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3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
We propose that spontaneous folding and molecular evolution of biopolymers are two universal aspects that must concur for life to happen. These aspects are fundamentally related to the chemical composition of biopolymers and crucially depend on the solvent in which they are embedded. We show that molecular information theory and energy landscape theory allow us to explore the limits that solvents impose on biopolymer existence. We consider 54 solvents, including water, alcohols, hydrocarbons, halogenated solvents, aromatic solvents, and low molecular weight substances made up of elements abundant in the universe, which may potentially take part in alternative biochemistries. We find that along with water, there are many solvents for which the liquid regime is compatible with biopolymer folding and evolution. We present a ranking of the solvents in terms of biopolymer compatibility. Many of these solvents have been found in molecular clouds or may be expected to occur in extrasolar planets.
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