Is the golden ratio a universal constant for self-replication?

Liu, Y. and Sumpter, D. J.T. (2018) Is the golden ratio a universal constant for self-replication? PLoS ONE, 13(7), e0200601. (doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0200601) (PMID:30011316) (PMCID:PMC6047800)

Abstract

The golden ratio, ϕ = 1.61803…, has often been found in connection with biological phenomena, ranging from spirals in sunflowers to gene frequency. One example where the golden ratio often arises is in self-replication, having its mathematical origins in Fibonacci’s sequence for “rabbit reproduction”. Recently, it has been claimed that ϕ determines the ratio between the number of different nucleobases in human genome. Such empirical examples continue to give credence to the idea that the golden ratio is a universal constant, not only in mathematics but also for biology. In this paper, we employ a general framework for chemically realistic self-replicating reaction systems and investigate whether the ratio of chemical species population follows “universal constants”. We find that many self-replicating systems can be characterised by an algebraic number, which, in some cases, is the golden ratio. However, many other algebraic numbers arise from these systems, and some of them—such as 3√2 1.25992 and 1.22074… which is also known as the 3rd lower golden ratio—arise more frequently in self-replicating systems than the golden ratio. The “universal constants” in these systems arise as roots of a limited number of distinct characteristic equations. In addition, these “universal constants” are transient behaviours of self-replicating systems, corresponding to the scenario that the resource inside the system is infinite, which is not always the case in practice. Therefore, we argue that the golden ratio should not be considered as a special universal constant in self-replicating systems, and that the ratios between different chemical species only go to certain numbers under some idealised scenarios.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Liu, Dr Yu

Creator Roles

Liu, Y.: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review and editing

• Authors: Liu, Y., and Sumpter, D. J.T.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Chemistry
• Journal Name: PLoS ONE
• Publisher: Public Library of Science
• ISSN: 1932-6203
• ISSN (Online): 1932-6203
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2018 Liu, Sumpter
• First Published: First published in PLoS ONE 13(7): e0200601
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons License