Lesson 8: Acid, Amino, Acids

学习目标

• Interpret prebiotic amino acid abundances from simulated synthesis and meteorite data, and relate the abundance order glycine > alanine > aspartic acid > valine to the first GC-frame codon assignments.
• Explain why a hypercycle cannot nucleate from a single template copy, and describe how it can emerge gradually from a GC-rich quasi-species through mutation and selection.
• Carry out and read the fixed-point analysis of a two-membered hypercycle, distinguishing competition, selection of either member, and mutual hypercyclic stabilization from the relative coupling constants.
• Explain how the evolution criterion generalizes to three-membered and n-membered hypercycles using cyclic symmetry and the rate-coefficient matrix.