DNA Denaturing through Photon Dissipation: A Possible Route to Archean Non-enzymatic Replication

Formidable difficulties arise when attempting to explain the non-enzymatic replication, proliferation, and the acquisition of homochirality and information content, of RNA and DNA at the beginnings of life. However, new light can be shed on these problems by viewing the origin of life as a non-equilibrium thermodynamic process in which RNA, DNA and other fundamental molecules of life arose as structures to dissipate the prevailing solar spectrum. Here we present experimental results which demonstrate that the absorption and dissipation of UV-C light by DNA at temperatures below their melting temperature leads to complete and reversible denaturing for small synthetic DNA of 25 base pairs (bp), and to partial and reversible denaturing for 48 bp DNA and for large salmon sperm and yeast DNA of average size 100 kbp. This result has direct bearing on the above mentioned problems and thereby opens the door to a possible thermodynamic route to the origin of life.