The implausibility of metabolic cycles on the prebiotic Earth

If complex cycles analogous to metabolic cycles could have operated on the primitive Earth, before the appearance of enzymes or other informational polymers, many of the obstacles to the construction of a plausible scenario for the origin of life would disappear. According to Kauffman, the catalytic...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PLoS biology 2008-01, Vol.6 (1), p.e18-e18
Main Author: Orgel, Leslie E
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Amino acids
Biochemistry
Biological Evolution
Carbon Dioxide - metabolism
Chemical Biology
Chemistry
Citric Acid Cycle
Earth
Earth (Planet)
Enzymes - metabolism
Evolution, Chemical
Evolutionary Biology
Origin of Life
Peptides
Peptides - metabolism
Polymers
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Summary:If complex cycles analogous to metabolic cycles could have operated on the primitive Earth, before the appearance of enzymes or other informational polymers, many of the obstacles to the construction of a plausible scenario for the origin of life would disappear. According to Kauffman, the catalytic properties of some of the members of a random-sequence mixture of peptides guarantee that a cyclic organization will emerge in which a small number of peptides will come to dominate the chemistry of the polymerization reaction.
ISSN:1545-7885
1544-9173
1545-7885
DOI:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060018