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What is the need for the complicated lagging-strand replicational mechanism of DNA, or equivalently, of anti-parallel DNA strand orientation, when parallel strand orientation could have made DNA self-replication much simpler? Why are nucleotides and other biomolecules not achiral? What is the evolutionary significance of asymmetric base composition? Answers to these disparate questions may have a common source: Asymmetric cooperativity. In this talk, I will explain how evolutionary optimization may have led to DNA acquiring these counter-intuitive properties. |