Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 118, Issue 3, Pages -Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2012741118
Keywords
homochirality; origin of life; prebiotic chemistry; random matrices; statistical physics
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Funding
- Universite Libre de Bruxelles
- Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique [PDR T.0094.16]
- Agence Nationale de la Recherche [ANR-10-IDEX-0001-02, ANR-11-LABX-0038]
- Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) [ANR-11-LABX-0038] Funding Source: Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR)
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Research indicates that large molecular systems containing abundant chiral species in chemical networks are likely to undergo a phase transition towards a homochiral state, confirming the extended model.
The selection of a single molecular handedness, or homochirality across all living matter, is a mystery in the origin of life. Frank's seminal model showed in the '50s how chiral symmetry breaking can occur in nonequilibrium chemical networks. However, an important shortcoming in this classic model is that it considers a small number of species, while there is no reason for the prebiotic system, in which homochirality first appeared, to have had such a simple composition. Furthermore, this model does not provide information on what could have been the size of the molecules involved in this homochiral prebiotic system. Here, we show that large molecular systems are likely to undergo a phase transition toward a homochiral state, as a consequence of the fact that they contain a large number of chiral species. Using chemoinformatics tools, we quantify how abundant chiral species are in the chemical universe of all possible molecules of a given length. Then, we propose that Frank's model should be extended to include a large number of species, in order to possess the transition toward homochirality, as confirmed by numerical simulations. Finally, using random matrix theory, we prove that large nonequilibrium reaction networks possess a generic and robust phase transition toward a homochiral state.
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