Berlin 2012 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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SYOL: Symposium Origin of Life

SYOL 1: Symposium Origin of Life

SYOL 1.2: Hauptvortrag

Freitag, 30. März 2012, 10:00–10:30, H 0105

Spontaneous autocatalysis and periodic switching in a prebiotic broth — •Eva Wollrab¹, Sabrina Scherer¹, Karsten Kruse², and Albrecht Ott¹ — ¹Biologische Experimentalphysik, Universität des Saarlandes, Saarbrücken — ²Theoretische Biologische Physik, Universität des Saarlandes, Saarbrücken

The pioneering experiments of Stanley Miller and Harold Urey have suggested that a large number of today's biomolecules spontaneously emerged under prebiotic conditions. How these organic molecules self-organized to produce the earliest forms of life is poorly understood. Here we perform Miller-Urey-type experiments and monitor the temporal development of the organic mixture using real-time mass-spectrometry. We observe the continuous emergence of a large number of substances during hours, followed by several orders of magnitude faster, autocatalytic growth of polymeric species. In the following these species appear and vanish periodically, while the amplitude of the oscillation increases. Due to the high complexity of the considered chemical dynamics, it will be difficult to determine the precise molecular pathways in the system. However, we will discuss possible, more general mechanisms that lead to the observed behavior. Our results show that upon weak energetic driving, a randomly generated, complex chemical system can spontaneously generate order.