A World Beyond Physics by Stuart A. Kauffman

Author:Stuart A. Kauffman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2019-11-10T16:00:00+00:00

Joining a Metabolism to a Collectively Autocatalytic Set

We have now shown how a connected catalyzed metabolism can have arisen by the Erdős–Rényi phase transition. We need now to ask if this separate metabolism can be reciprocally connected to an autocatalytic set, the former feeding the latter, and the latter catalyzing the reactions in the metabolism.

In short, can we marry our catalyzed metabolism to a collectively autocatalytic set so the set catalyzes the reactions in the connected metabolism, and the metabolism makes molecules useful to the set?

Of course we can, for it is our hypothesis, and a perfectly reasonable one.

Figures 5.6 and 5.7 show our happy system. In Figure 5.6, some of the peptides in the autocatalytic set catalyze some of the reactions in the metabolism. In reality, of course, we hope that peptides will catalyze all the needed reactions in the metabolism. In Figure 5.7, the metabolism reciprocally feeds the collectively autocatalytic set! That is, the metabolism makes small molecules needed by the set. Thus, the metabolism and autocatalytic set are married.

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