ArticleJournal of molecular evolution2009
The origin of life: chemical evolution of a metabolic system in a mineral honeycomb?
Article in Journal of molecular evolution, 2009. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed, 62 citations in OpenAlex.
- Conditions Enabling the Persistence of Cooperating Synthetase, Ligase, and Mutation-Inhibitor Catalytic Polymers.Journal of molecular evolution · 2026Article
- The dynamics of prebiotic take-off: the transfer of functional RNA communities from mineral surfaces to vesicles.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Biomathematical enzyme kinetics model of prebiotic autocatalytic RNA networks: degenerating parasite-specific hyperparasite catalysts confer parasite resistance and herald the birth of molecular immunity.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- The Grayness of the Origin of Life.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Primitive Compartmentalization for the Sustainable Replication of Genetic Molecules.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Review
- Catalytic promiscuity in the RNA World may have aided the evolution of prebiotic metabolism.PLoS computational biology · 2021Article
- Survival of RNA Replicators is much Easier in Protocells than in Surface-Based, Spatial Systems.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2019Article
- Systems protobiology: origin of life in lipid catalytic networks.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2018Review
- Sustainability of a Compartmentalized Host-Parasite Replicator System under Periodic Washout-Mixing Cycles.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2018Article
- The role of public goods in planetary evolution.Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2017Article
- The origin of heredity in protocells.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2017Article
- Toy trains, loaded dice and the origin of life: dimerization on mineral surfaces under periodic drive with Gaussian inputs.Royal Society open science · 2017Article
- Co-operation between Polymerases and Nucleotide Synthetases in the RNA World.PLoS computational biology · 2016Article
- Toward major evolutionary transitions theory 2.0.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2015Article
- In silico ribozyme evolution in a metabolically coupled RNA population.Biology direct · 2015Article
- The RNA World: molecular cooperation at the origins of life.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2015Review
- An origin-of-life reactor to simulate alkaline hydrothermal vents.Journal of molecular evolution · 2014Article
- Phenotype/genotype sequence complementarity and prebiotic replicator coexistence in the metabolically coupled replicator system.BMC evolutionary biology · 2014Article
- Primal eukaryogenesis: on the communal nature of precellular States, ancestral to modern life.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2012Article
- Computer simulation on the cooperation of functional molecules during the early stages of evolution.PloS one · 2012Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 4 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
For the RNA-world hypothesis to be ecologically feasible, selection mechanisms acting on replicator communities need to be invoked and the corresponding scenarios of molecular evolution specified. Complementing our previous models of chemical evolution on mineral surfaces, in which selection was the consequence of the limited mobility of macromolecules attached to the surface, here we offer an alternative realization of prebiotic group-level selection: the physical encapsulation of local replicator communities into the pores of the mineral substrate. Based on cellular automaton simulations we argue that the effect of group selection in a mineral honeycomb could have been efficient enough to keep prebiotic ribozymes of different specificities and replication rates coexistent, and their metabolic cooperation protected from extensive molecular parasitism. We suggest that mutants of the mild parasites persistent in the metabolic system can acquire useful functions such as replicase activity or the production of membrane components, thus opening the way for the evolution of the first autonomous protocells on Earth.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.