Origin of Information Encoding in Nucleic Acids through a Dissipation-Replication Relation

TL;DR

This paper proposes a thermodynamic mechanism where nucleic acids and amino acids co-evolved to dissipate UVC light, potentially explaining the origin of genetic information through entropy production principles.

Contribution

It introduces a physical-chemical model linking nucleic acid information encoding to entropy-driven dissipation of UVC light, grounded in non-equilibrium thermodynamics.

Findings

Amino acids with high affinity to codons promote UVC photon dissipation.

Nucleic acids may have been selected for their role in increasing entropy production.

The dissipation-replication relation could underpin the origin and evolution of genetic information.

Abstract

Ultraviolet light incident on organic material can initiate its spontaneous dissipative structuring into chromophores which can then catalyze their own replication. This may have been the case for one of the most ancient of all chromophores dissipating the Archean UVC photon flux, the nucleic acids. Under the empirically established imperative of increasing entropy production, nucleic acids with affinity to particular amino acids which foment UVC photon dissipation would have been "thermodynamically selected" through this dissipation-replication relation. Indeed, we show here that those amino acids with characteristics most relevant to fomenting UVC photon dissipation are precisely those with greatest affinity to their codons or anticodons. This could provide a physical-chemical mechanism for the accumulation of information in nucleic acids relevant to the dissipation of the externally imposed photon potential. This mechanism could provide a non-equilibrium thermodynamic foundation, based on increasing global entropy production of the biosphere, for the tenants of Darwinian natural selection. We show how this mechanism might have begun operating at the origin of life in the Archean, and how, in fact, it still operates today, albeit indirectly through complex biosynthetic pathways now operating in the visible.