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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Prof. Irene Chen, Harvard University
Information in the Prebiotic World
RiboEvo Special Seminar
During the origin of life, the amount of information encoded by replicating systems presumably increased over time, eventually leading to the complex organisms we see today. We address two questions related to this process. 1) How much information could have been encoded in prebiotic replication? The rate at which errors are made during replication imposes a theoretical limit on the amount of information that can be faithfully propagated (Eigen's error threshold). We show how this threshold could be postponed in a realistic prebiotic scenario and estimate the magnitude of this effect in an experimental system. 2) Could chemical mechanisms alone drive
an increase in complexity? We demonstrate how prebiotic mechanisms in nucleic acid polymerization could predispose the system toward complex sequences.
For more information contact Prof. Loren Williams (404-894-9752).
