Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo, 3-8-1 Komaba, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-8902, Japan.
Phys Rev E. 2016 Mar;93(3):032503. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.93.032503. Epub 2016 Mar 7.
A biological system consists of a variety of polymers that are synthesized from monomers by catalysis, which exists only for some long polymers. It is important to elucidate the emergence and sustenance of such autocatalytic polymerization. We analyze here the stochastic polymerization reaction dynamics to investigate the transition time from a state with almost no catalysts to a state with sufficient catalysts. We found an optimal volume that minimizes this transition time, which agrees with the inverse of the catalyst concentration at the unstable fixed point that separates the two states, as is theoretically explained. Relevance to the origin of life is also discussed.
生物系统由通过催化作用由单体合成的各种聚合物组成，这种催化作用仅存在于一些长聚合物中。阐明这种自催化聚合的出现和维持是很重要的。我们在这里分析了随机聚合反应动力学，以研究从几乎没有催化剂的状态到有足够催化剂的状态的转变时间。我们发现了一个最优体积，它最小化了这个转变时间，这与分离这两个状态的不稳定平衡点的催化剂浓度的倒数一致，这在理论上得到了解释。还讨论了与生命起源的相关性。
