ArticlePloS one2011
The evolution of enzyme specificity in the metabolic replicator model of prebiotic evolution.
Article in PloS one, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 25 citations in OpenAlex.
- On the Origin of Biomolecular Networks.Frontiers in genetics · 2019Pooled it
- Template-Based Catalysis and the Emergence of Collectively Autocatalytic Systems.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- The dynamics of prebiotic take-off: the transfer of functional RNA communities from mineral surfaces to vesicles.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Catalytic promiscuity in the RNA World may have aided the evolution of prebiotic metabolism.PLoS computational biology · 2021Article
- Emergence of light-driven protometabolism on recruitment of a photocatalytic cofactor by a self-replicator.Nature chemistry · 2020Article
- Dynamics and stability in prebiotic information integration: an RNA World model from first principles.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- The evolutionary dynamics of metabolic protocells.PLoS computational biology · 2018Article
- Ecology and Evolution in the RNA World Dynamics and Stability of Prebiotic Replicator Systems.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2017Review
- 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
- Chasing the Origin of Viruses: Capsid-Forming Genes as a Life-Saving Preadaptation within a Community of Early Replicators.PloS one · 2015Article
- Evolution of the division of labor between genes and enzymes in the RNA world.PLoS computational biology · 2014Article
- Phenotype/genotype sequence complementarity and prebiotic replicator coexistence in the metabolically coupled replicator system.BMC evolutionary biology · 2014Article
- Article
- Spatial aspects of prebiotic replicator coexistence and community stability in a surface-bound RNA world model.BMC evolutionary biology · 2013Article
- Early evolution of efficient enzymes and genome organization.Biology direct · 2012Article
- Article
- Computer simulation on the cooperation of functional molecules during the early stages of evolution.PloS one · 2012Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The chemical machinery of life must have been catalytic from the outset. Models of the chemical origins have attempted to explain the ecological mechanisms maintaining a minimum necessary diversity of prebiotic replicator enzymes, but little attention has been paid so far to the evolutionary initiation of that diversity. We propose a possible first step in this direction: based on our previous model of a surface-bound metabolic replicator system we try to explain how the adaptive specialization of enzymatic replicator populations might have led to more diverse and more efficient communities of cooperating replicators with two different enzyme activities. The key assumptions of the model are that mutations in the replicator population can lead towards a) both of the two different enzyme specificities in separate replicators: efficient "specialists" or b) a "generalist" replicator type with both enzyme specificities working at less efficiency, or c) a fast-replicating, non-enzymatic "parasite". We show that under realistic trade-off constraints on the phenotypic effects of these mutations the evolved replicator community will be usually composed of both types of specialists and of a limited abundance of parasites, provided that the replicators can slowly migrate on the mineral surface. It is only at very weak trade-offs that generalists take over in a phase-transition-like manner. The parasites do not seriously harm the system but can freely mutate, therefore they can be considered as pre-adaptations to later, useful functions that the metabolic system can adopt to increase its own fitness.
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