Evolutionary features in a minimal physical system: Diversity, selection, growth, inheritance, and adaptation

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bunin, Guy; Rivoire, Olivier
• 署名单位: Technion Israel Institute of Technology; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Universite PSL; Ecole Superieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles de la Ville de Paris (ESPCI)
• 刊物名称: PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0027-14258
• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2425753122
• 发表日期: 2025-08-05
• 关键词: exponential-growth; origin; INFORMATION; replication; switch; LIFE

摘要

We present a simple physical model that recapitulates several features of biological evolution, while being based only on thermally driven attachment and detachment of elementary building blocks. Through its dynamics, this model samples a large and diverse array of nonequilibrium steady states, both within and between independent trajectories. These dynamics exhibit directionality with a quantity that increases in time, selection, and preferential spatial expansion of particular states, as well as inheritance in the form of correlated compositions between successive states, and environment-dependent adaptation. The model challenges common conceptions regarding the requirements for life-like properties: It does not involve separate mechanisms for metabolism, replication, and compartmentalization; stores and transmits digital information without template replication or assembly of large molecules; exhibits selection both without and with reproduction; and undergoes growth without autocatalysis. As the model is based on generic physical principles, it is amenable to various experimental implementations.