SKM 2023 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 10: Evolution and Origin of Life

BP 10.4: Vortrag

Dienstag, 28. März 2023, 10:30–10:45, BAR 0106

Kinetics of Information Content in a Virtual Circular Genome — •Ludwig Burger, Tobias Thun, and Ulrich Gerland — Technical University of Munich

We study the kinetics of information content in an ensemble of oligonucleotides that undergo hybridization, dehybridization, non-enzymatic templated ligation and single-strand cleavage. The stability of hybridized complexes depends on the sequence because the dehybridization rate depends on the free hybridization energy. Mismatches are possible, but they lead to a thermodynamic and kinetic penalty. The information that is supposed to be "stored" in the ensemble is a circular genome as well as its complementary strand. Therefore, the oligonucleotides in the initial ensemble are chosen such that every element in the ensemble is part of the true genomic sequence. In most investigated scenarios, the initial ensemble loses its information content and no information amplification can be observed. Depending on the choice of ligation and cleavage rate, the loss of information can be driven by cleavage or ligation. Information loss by ligation is caused by templated ligation processes that produce long strands that do not resemble the true genomic sequence. This is the case if the hybridization site is too short or contains too many mismatches to guarantee correct alignment of template and ligated strands. Even though information amplification appears to be difficult to achieve, the timescale of information loss can be extended by tuning the hybridization energy or the concentration of short oligomers.