Dresden 2017 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik
BP 49: Physics of the Genesis of Life - Focus Session organized by Moritz Kreysing and Dieter Braun
BP 49.5: Vortrag
Donnerstag, 23. März 2017, 10:45–11:00, SCH A251
Thermally driven DNA phase transitions and protein expression — •Christof B. Mast1, Mara L. Heinlein1, Matthias Morasch1, Noel Yeh Martin2, Sheref Mansy2, Hannes Mutschler3, and Dieter Braun1 — 1LMU Munich, Amalienstrasse 54, 80799 München, Germany — 2University of Trento, Via Sommarive 9, 38123 Povo TN, Italy — 3Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Am Klopferspitz 18, 82152 Martinsried, Germany
Energy fluxes are the driving forces that push complex systems out of equilibrium into the living state. While modern organisms predominantly use chemical energy fluxes, we argue that the fundamental flux of heat energy across water filled pores was essential to jump start life four billion years ago: A thermal gradient drives thermal fluid convection and thermophoresis of bio-molecules, resulting in their massive and length selective accumulation. We demonstrate that this process is also selective for sequence and chirality which is essential for the emergence of the first functional, homochiral polymers. Starting from nanomolar concentrations of short and unbound single stranded DNA with a length of 36 bases, thermal trapping cooperatively increases their local concentration and length by hybridization, ultimately leading to the formation of a DNA hydrogel. Single mutations in sequence as well as strands of different chirality are spatially separated and therefore locally amplified during the hydrogel phase transition. We also show that thermal traps are compatible and enhance cell free protein expression, possibly mimicking a later stage during the origin of life.