Centre for Computational Science, Department of Chemistry, UCL, 20 Gordon Street, London, WC1H 0AJ, UK.
Chem Soc Rev. 2012 Aug 21;41(16):5430-46. doi: 10.1039/c2cs35018a. Epub 2012 Jun 7.
Origins of life studies represent an exciting and highly multidisciplinary research field. In this review we focus on the contributions made by theory, modelling and simulation to addressing fundamental issues in the domain and the advances these approaches have helped to make in the field. Theoretical approaches will continue to make a major impact at the "systems chemistry" level based on the analysis of the remarkable properties of nonlinear catalytic chemical reaction networks, which arise due to the auto-catalytic and cross-catalytic nature of so many of the putative processes associated with self-replication and self-reproduction. In this way, we describe inter alia nonlinear kinetic models of RNA replication within a primordial Darwinian soup, the origins of homochirality and homochiral polymerization. We then discuss state-of-the-art computationally-based molecular modelling techniques that are currently being deployed to investigate various scenarios relevant to the origins of life.
生命起源的研究代表了一个令人兴奋且高度多学科的研究领域。在这篇综述中，我们重点介绍了理论、建模和模拟在解决该领域基本问题方面的贡献，以及这些方法在该领域取得的进展。基于对非线性催化化学反应网络显著特性的分析，理论方法将继续在“系统化学”层面产生重大影响，这些特性源于与自我复制和自我繁殖相关的许多假定过程的自催化和交叉催化性质。通过这种方式，我们描述了原始达尔文汤中 RNA 复制的非线性动力学模型、手性起源和手性聚合。然后，我们讨论了目前正在部署的基于计算的最先进分子建模技术，以研究与生命起源相关的各种场景。
