Emergence and maintenance of the homochirality of life

Abstract: Homochirality is a property common to all chiral molecules (i.e. those that are not superimposable on their mirror image) in living organisms, which means that these molecules are present in only one form (right or left) to the exclusion of the other. Understanding the emergence of homochirality is a central question for the origin of life.

In a first study, we have shown that homochirality can generically emerge in a large class of autocatalytic chemical networks, provided the network is large enough (in terms of the number of its chiral species) and driven sufficiently far from equilibrium [1,2]. Polymerization produces a large number of different molecular species as the length of the polymers increases, which is why the question of whether — and how — polymerization can support the emergence of homochirality arises naturally. To make progress on this issue, we then explored the conditions that permit the emergence and maintenance of homochirality in an RNA reactor via template-directed ligation and polymerization [3].

[1] G. Laurent, D. Lacoste, and P. Gaspard, PNAS (2021) 118 (3) e2012741118. [2] G. Laurent, D. Lacoste, and P. Gaspard, Proc. R. Soc. A 478:20210590 (2022). [3] G. Laurent, T. Göppel, D. Lacoste and U. Gerland, PRX Life 2, 013015 (2024)

BiologyChemistryMathematicsPhysics

Audience: researchers in the topic

( paper | video )

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Autocatalysis in reaction networks

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Autocatalysis is a key factor in biochemical systems, often featured in models illustrating complex dynamic behaviors like bistability, hysteresis, oscillations, or chaos. While it plays a crucial role from origin-of-life and metabolic processes to population biology and economics, a comprehensive understanding is still a work in progress.

Given its interdisciplinary nature, researchers from various fields, including biology, chemistry, computer science, mathematics, and physics, have contributed to unraveling the intricacies of autocatalysis. Despite this shared interest, direct interaction among these researchers is infrequent.

The purpose of this specialized seminar is to provide a common ground for interdisciplinary researchers to gather, encouraging discussions and fostering collaborations. The seminar occurs bi-monthly on Thursdays at 5 PM JST (9 AM CET), featuring two 30-minute independent talks followed by in-depth discussions with the speakers.

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