B5: Heat flow driven non-equilibrium environments to foster molecular evolution (Christof Mast)
How could simple, natural non-equilibrium systems drive the first processes of molecular evolution? This project investigates how natural, heterogeneous heat flows and thermophoresis-driven pH gradients can solve the critical problem of template inhibition and thus provide a key feature evolution. We explore how simple heat fluxes in the same ubiquitous molecule-selective system generate various concentration ratios of prebiotic components such as polyphosphates, amino acids, or oligonucleotides, enabling a wide range of initial conditions for prebiotic chemistries inaccessible under equilibrium conditions.