The life story of hydrogen peroxide II: a periodic pH and thermochemical drive for the RNA world

Abstract

It is now accepted that primordial non-cellular RNA communities must have been subject to a periodic drive in order to replicate and prosper. We have pro- posed the oxidation of thiosulfate by hydrogen peroxide as this drive. This reaction system behaves as (i) a thermochemical and (ii) a pH oscillator, and in this work, we unify (i) and (ii) for the first time. We report thermally self- consistent, dynamical simulations in which the system transitions smoothly from nearly isothermal pH to fully developed thermo-pH oscillatory regimes. We use this oscillator to drive simulated replication of a 39-bp RNA species. Production of replicated duplex under thermo-pH drive was significantly enhanced compared with that under purely thermochemical drive, effectively allowing longer strands to replicate. Longer strands are fitter, with more poten- tial to evolve enzyme activity and resist degradation. We affirm that concern over the alleged toxicity of hydrogen peroxide to life is largely misplaced in the current context, we survey its occurrence in the solar system to motivate its inclusion as a biosignature in the search for life on other worlds and high- light that pH oscillations in a spatially extended, bounded system manifest as the fundamental driving force of life: a proton gradient.