ArticleBiology direct2012
Evolution before genes.
Article in Biology direct, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 96 papers.
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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.
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Who cites it
96 citing papers in PubMed.
- Evolution from Composome to RNA Replicase.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Thermodynamics of Darwinian selection in molecular replicators.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Protocellular energy transduction, information and fitness.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Is the emergence of life and of agency expected?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Evolutionary features in a minimal physical system: Diversity, selection, growth, inheritance, and adaptation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Autocatalytic assembly of a chimeric aminoacyl-RNA synthetase ribozyme.Science advances · 2025Article
- Assembly theory and its relationship with computational complexity.Npj complexity · 2025Article
- Spatial structure supports diversity in prebiotic autocatalytic chemical ecosystems.Npj complexity · 2025Article
- Recognition-Encoded Molecules: A Minimal Self-Replicator.Chemistry (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany) · 2024Article
- Cross-chiral exponential amplification of an RNA enzyme.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Self-generating autocatalytic networks: structural results, algorithms and their relevance to early biochemistry.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2024Article
- The GARD Prebiotic Reproduction Model Described in Order and Complexity.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Evolution at the Origins of Life?Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Small-molecule autocatalysis drives compartment growth, competition and reproduction.Nature chemistry · 2024Article
- Origin & influence of autocatalytic reaction networks at the advent of the RNA world.RNA biology · 2024Review
- Multistable Protocells Can Aid the Evolution of Prebiotic Autocatalytic Sets.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- The ecology-evolution continuum and the origin of life.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2023Article
- Assessment of Stoichiometric Autocatalysis across Element Groups.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2023Article
- Environmental Stability and Its Importance for the Emergence of Darwinian Evolution.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Multispecies autocatalytic RNA reaction networks in coacervates.Communications chemistry · 2023Article
36 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundOur current understanding of evolution is so tightly linked to template-dependent replication of DNA and RNA molecules that the old idea from Oparin of a self-reproducing 'garbage bag' ('coacervate') of chemicals that predated fully-fledged cell-like entities seems to be farfetched to most scientists today. However, this is exactly the kind of scheme we propose for how Darwinian evolution could have occurred prior to template replication.
resultsWe cannot confirm previous claims that autocatalytic sets of organic polymer molecules could undergo evolution in any interesting sense by themselves. While we and others have previously imagined inhibition would result in selectability, we found that it produced multiple attractors in an autocatalytic set that cannot be selected for. Instead, we discovered that if general conditions are satisfied, the accumulation of adaptations in chemical reaction networks can occur. These conditions are the existence of rare reactions producing viable cores (analogous to a genotype), that sustains a molecular periphery (analogous to a phenotype).
conclusionsWe conclude that only when a chemical reaction network consists of many such viable cores, can it be evolvable. When many cores are enclosed in a compartment there is competition between cores within the same compartment, and when there are many compartments, there is between-compartment competition due to the phenotypic effects of cores and their periphery at the compartment level. Acquisition of cores by rare chemical events, and loss of cores at division, allows macromutation, limited heredity and selectability, thus explaining how a poor man's natural selection could have operated prior to genetic templates. This is the only demonstration to date of a mechanism by which pre-template accumulation of adaptation could occur.
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