Life’s defining characteristics such as information storage, replication, and catalysis pose a fundamental puzzle in the origin-of-life research. Here, we advance a theoretical framework showing how a pool of initially random heteropolymers, undergoing nonenzymatic, template-assisted replication under cyclic environmental changes, can spontaneously acquire catalytic function. Our recently...
UV light has been postulated as a potential energy source for driving prebiotic chemistry on the early Earth. Here, we investigate the influence of UV light on nucelobases/sides and further study the interactions of UV light and lipid vesicles. It has been suggested previously that the canonical nucleobases used by life today may have been selected due to their enhanced photostability, based...
