TY - JOUR
T1 - Noise-Induced Mechanism for Biological Homochirality of Early Life Self-Replicators
AU - Jafarpour, Farshid
AU - Biancalani, Tommaso
AU - Goldenfeld, Nigel
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 American Physical Society.
PY - 2015/10/8
Y1 - 2015/10/8
N2 - The observed single-handedness of biological amino acids and sugars has long been attributed to autocatalysis. However, the stability of homochiral states in deterministic autocatalytic systems relies on cross inhibition of the two chiral states, an unlikely scenario for early life self-replicators. Here, we present a theory for a stochastic individual-level model of autocatalysis due to early life self-replicators. Without chiral inhibition, the racemic state is the global attractor of the deterministic dynamics, but intrinsic multiplicative noise stabilizes the homochiral states, in both well-mixed and spatially extended systems. We conclude that autocatalysis is a viable mechanism for homochirality, without imposing additional nonlinearities such as chiral inhibition.
AB - The observed single-handedness of biological amino acids and sugars has long been attributed to autocatalysis. However, the stability of homochiral states in deterministic autocatalytic systems relies on cross inhibition of the two chiral states, an unlikely scenario for early life self-replicators. Here, we present a theory for a stochastic individual-level model of autocatalysis due to early life self-replicators. Without chiral inhibition, the racemic state is the global attractor of the deterministic dynamics, but intrinsic multiplicative noise stabilizes the homochiral states, in both well-mixed and spatially extended systems. We conclude that autocatalysis is a viable mechanism for homochirality, without imposing additional nonlinearities such as chiral inhibition.
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U2 - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.158101
DO - 10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.158101
M3 - Article
C2 - 26550754
AN - SCOPUS:84944111640
SN - 0031-9007
VL - 115
JO - Physical Review Letters
JF - Physical Review Letters
IS - 15
M1 - 158101
ER -