Speaker
Ulrich Gerland
(TU Munich, DE)
Description
Pools of RNA oligomers are believed to play a central role for the spontaneous emergence of living systems. In suitable non-equilibrium environments, the RNA strands in such pools are thought to hybridize and dehybridize, ligate and break, such that they generate longer RNA molecules, which fold and function as ribozymes, ultimately enabling molecular evolution. However, concrete scenarios and possible pathways remain unclear. I will describe our ongoing effort to explore the complex dynamics of RNA pools computationally. The aim is to illustrate and understand how emergent behaviors arise from the interplay of the underlying molecular processes, and how the non-equilibrium environment affects these behaviors.