Differential stability and dynamics of DNA-based and RNA-based coacervates affect non-enzymatic RNA chemistry
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The RNA-peptide world hypothesis postulates the early co-evolution of RNA and peptides that led to the emergence of non-enzymatic RNA replication and peptide synthesis. Although nucleotides and amino acids have been shown to form and polymerise under prebiotic conditions, the origins of their synergy remain unclear. We propose that cooperation between DNA, RNA and peptides could have stemmed from their co-localisation in early biological compartments. Here, we show that heterogeneous mixtures of prebiotic oligonucleotides and peptides can spontaneously assemble into primitive coacervates. Experimental and computational studies reveal that peptide/nucleic acid coacervates are highly robust and form under a notably broad range of conditions. RNA-based coacervates are exceptionally stable and, in the presence of DNA, very fluid, which facilitates diffusion of reactive oligonucleotides and supports prebiotic RNA chemistry. Our findings suggest that coacervation may have occurred very early on the evolutionary timeline and fostered the emergence of a nucleic acid-peptide world. This study provides insights into the prebiotic role of coacervates and reconsiders their significance for the origins of life and the emergence of primitive replication and translation systems.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".