Physics NotePublished
A Critical Phenomenon Approach of Biogenesis
C. Tsallis; Ricardo Ferreira
1986
Publication details
- Authors
- C. Tsallis; Ricardo Ferreira
- Type
- Physics Note
- Status
- Published
- Publication date
- 1986
- Description
- A fundamental prebiotic stage of the origin of life is the formation, from a random assembly of oligomers, of information-containing self-replicating polymers. By adopting a growth mechanism (already used by Anderson and others) essentially based in the complementarity of the Crick and Watson base-pairs, we show that this stage may have occurred as a critical phenomenon. Within a simple real-space renormalization group framework we calculate the relevant critical lines, which are different for different sequences of base-pairs. The picture incorporates in a natural way Darwinian-like evolution, is consistent with reasonable nucleotide ratios (A+T)/(C+G), and suggests that polymers like ADN double-chains are more primitive than proteins.
- Year
- 1986
- Number
- CBPF-NF-035/86
- Linked to a thesis
- No
- Linked to a grant
- No