ArticleNature2012
Spontaneous network formation among cooperative RNA replicators.
Article in Nature, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 152 papers.
What it found
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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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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.
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Who cites it
152 citing papers in PubMed.
- Approaching life in a test tube with prebiotic chemistry.Communications chemistry · 2026Review
- The RNA-First Fallacy: Conflating Evolutionary Ancestry with Prebiotic Primacy.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Complex and Messy Prebiotic Chemistry: Obstacles and Opportunities for an RNA World.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Brave new RNA world(s): from prebiotic chemistry to gene regulation and RNA technology.Frontiers in genetics · 2026Review
- Acytota and the evolution of complexity.European biophysics journal : EBJ · 2025Review
- Bifurcations and phase transitions in the origins of life.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Is the emergence of life and of agency expected?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Thermodynamics of Darwinian selection in molecular replicators.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Article
- Exploring the space of self-reproducing ribozymes using generative models.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Article
- Assembly of catalytic complexes from randomized oligonucleotides.Science advances · 2025Article
- Autocatalytic assembly of a chimeric aminoacyl-RNA synthetase ribozyme.Science advances · 2025Article
- Origin of the RNA World in Cold Hadean Geothermal Fields Enriched in Zinc and Potassium: Abiogenesis as a Positive Fallout from the Moon-Forming Impact?Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Competitive exclusion among self-replicating molecules curtails the tendency of chemistry to diversify.Nature chemistry · 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 RNA Revolution in the Central Molecular Biology Dogma Evolution.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
- Cross-chiral exponential amplification of an RNA enzyme.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Darwinian Evolution of Self-Replicating DNA in a Synthetic Protocell.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Template-based copying in chemically fuelled dynamic combinatorial libraries.Nature chemistry · 2024Article
92 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The origins of life on Earth required the establishment of self-replicating chemical systems capable of maintaining and evolving biological information. In an RNA world, single self-replicating RNAs would have faced the extreme challenge of possessing a mutation rate low enough both to sustain their own information and to compete successfully against molecular parasites with limited evolvability. Thus theoretical analyses suggest that networks of interacting molecules were more likely to develop and sustain life-like behaviour. Here we show that mixtures of RNA fragments that self-assemble into self-replicating ribozymes spontaneously form cooperative catalytic cycles and networks. We find that a specific three-membered network has highly cooperative growth dynamics. When such cooperative networks are competed directly against selfish autocatalytic cycles, the former grow faster, indicating an intrinsic ability of RNA populations to evolve greater complexity through cooperation. We can observe the evolvability of networks through in vitro selection. Our experiments highlight the advantages of cooperative behaviour even at the molecular stages of nascent life.
Indexed as
Identifiers
23075853What 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.