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bioRxiv · 10.1101/755355

Survival of self-replicating molecules under transient compartmentalization with natural selection

Laurent, G.·Peliti, L.·Lacoste, D.
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Abstract

The problem of the emergence and survival of self-replicating molecules in origin-of-life scenarios is plagued by the error catastrophe, which is usually escaped by considering effects of compartmentalization, as in the stochastic corrector model. By addressing the problem in a simple system composed of a self-replicating molecule (a replicase) and a parasite molecule that needs the replicase for copying itself, we show that transient (rather than permanent) compartmentalization is sufficient to the task. We also exhibit a regime in which the concentrations of the two kinds of molecules undergo sustained oscillations. Our model should be relevant not only for origin-of-life scenarios but also for describing directed evolution experiments, which increasingly rely on transient compartmentalization with pooling and natural selection.

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Laurent, G., Peliti, L., Lacoste, D.. 2019-09-03. Survival of self-replicating molecules under transient compartmentalization with natural selection. https://doi.org/10.1101/755355

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