Given binary digits (or ‘bits’) 0 and 1, we can encode our 26-letter alphabet, and its extensions, from infant babbling “ba-ba-ba,” to Hamlet’s contemplation on life or death. To encode our alphabet, let the 5-digit string 00000 map to the letter ”A,” let 00001 map to “B,” and 00010 map to ”C,” and so forth

Peptides of glycine and alanine form over 24 hours of incubation, depending on whether activator (TP) is present or absent, the pH, and the temperature. (A) detected distribution of each species for temperatures 0-to100C (y axis) and pH 1-to-12 in the absence (black square) or presence (blue fill) of TP activator. The concentration of each

To understand in greater depth how different peptide products enrich, we studied how glycine(G) alone forms products of different length (GG, GGG, and GGGG) during sample drying. In (a) we see the how drying of 1 ml reaction solution is complete in about 8 hours (shaded box). In the presence of TP and at high

In the first step, at elevated pH and in the presence of trimetaphosphate (TP), glycine is activated at its N-terminus, and the activated glycine then reacts with glycine to form diglycine (GG), while generating protons that drive the pH down, as in Mechanism 1 (a). In the second step, at lower pH, diglycine or longer