ArticleNature communications2021
Darwinian properties and their trade-offs in autocatalytic RNA reaction networks.
Article in Nature communications, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 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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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed, 30 citations in OpenAlex.
- Proto-Biosignatures and Planetary Geochemical Metabolism: A Thermodynamic Screening Model of Prebiotic Geochemical Organization.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- The challenge of distinguishing living from non-living entities.Theory in biosciences = Theorie in den Biowissenschaften · 2026Review
- The RNA-First Fallacy: Conflating Evolutionary Ancestry with Prebiotic Primacy.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Autocatalytic cores in the diluted regime: classification and properties.Journal of mathematical biology · 2026Article
- Thermodynamics of Darwinian selection in molecular replicators.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Article
- Cross-chiral exponential amplification of an RNA enzyme.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Design principles, growth laws, and competition of minimal autocatalysts.Communications chemistry · 2024Article
- Is Life Binary or Gradual?Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Origin of ribonucleotide recognition motifs through ligand mimicry at early earth.RNA biology · 2024Review
- Multispecies autocatalytic RNA reaction networks in coacervates.Communications chemistry · 2023Article
- An interdisciplinary effort to understand chemical organizations at the origin of life.iScience · 2023Article
- Prebiotic Chemistry Experiments Using Microfluidic Devices.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Review
- The Origin of Life: What Is the Question?Astrobiology · 2022Article
- Genome Evolution from Random Ligation of RNAs of Autocatalytic Sets.International journal of molecular sciences · 2021Article
- RNA diversification by a self-reproducing ribozyme revealed by deep sequencing and kinetic modelling.Chemical communications (Cambridge, England) · 2021Article
- Self-Reproduction and Darwinian Evolution in Autocatalytic Chemical Reaction Systems.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Review
- Origin of Species before Origin of Life: The Role of Speciation in Chemical Evolution.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Review
- Social Networking of Quasi-Species Consortia drive Virolution via Persistence.AIMS microbiology · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 2 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Discovering autocatalytic chemistries that can evolve is a major goal in systems chemistry and a critical step towards understanding the origin of life. Autocatalytic networks have been discovered in various chemistries, but we lack a general understanding of how network topology controls the Darwinian properties of variation, differential reproduction, and heredity, which are mediated by the chemical composition. Using barcoded sequencing and droplet microfluidics, we establish a landscape of thousands of networks of RNAs that catalyze their own formation from fragments, and derive relationships between network topology and chemical composition. We find that strong variations arise from catalytic innovations perturbing weakly connected networks, and that growth increases with global connectivity. These rules imply trade-offs between reproduction and variation, and between compositional persistence and variation along trajectories of network complexification. Overall, connectivity in reaction networks provides a lever to balance variation (to explore chemical states) with reproduction and heredity (persistence being necessary for selection to act), as required for chemical evolution.
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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.