ArticleNature communications2022
Evolutionary transition from a single RNA replicator to a multiple replicator network.
Article in Nature communications, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 55 citations in OpenAlex.
- Parasites constrain within-population diversification while accelerating between-population divergence in an RNA replication system.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- The RNA-First Fallacy: Conflating Evolutionary Ancestry with Prebiotic Primacy.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Experimental evolution toward extinction in a molecular host-parasite system.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Compositional memory matters for early molecular systems.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Brave new RNA world(s): from prebiotic chemistry to gene regulation and RNA technology.Frontiers in genetics · 2026Review
- Thermodynamics of Darwinian selection in molecular replicators.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Bifurcations and phase transitions in the origins of life.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- How biophysics shapes the origins of life: a 21st IUPAB/62nd BSJ joint congress symposium overview.Biophysical reviews · 2024Article
- Emergence and maintenance of stable coexistence during a long-term multicellular evolution experiment.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Article
- Evolution at the Origins of Life?Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- The RNA-DNA world and the emergence of DNA-encoded heritable traits.RNA biology · 2024Article
- Theoretical perspective on synthetic man-made life: Learning from the origin of life.Quantitative biology (Beijing, China) · 2023Review
- Equilibria and oscillations in cheat-cooperator dynamics.Evolution letters · 2023Article
- Conditions for the origin of homochirality in primordial catalytic reaction networks.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Mixed anhydrides at the intersection between peptide and RNA autocatalytic sets: evolution of biological coding.Interface focus · 2023Article
- Cell-Free Production Systems in Droplet Microfluidics.Advances in biochemical engineering/biotechnology · 2023Review
- Plausible pathway for a host-parasite molecular replication network to increase its complexity through Darwinian evolution.PLoS computational biology · 2022Article
- The evolution of manipulative cheating.eLife · 2022Article
- On the Evolutionary History of the Twenty Encoded Amino Acids.Chemistry (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany) · 2022Review
- RNA World Modeling: A Comparison of Two Complementary Approaches.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In prebiotic evolution, self-replicating molecules are believed to have evolved into complex living systems by expanding their information and functions open-endedly. Theoretically, such evolutionary complexification could occur through successive appearance of novel replicators that interact with one another to form replication networks. Here we perform long-term evolution experiments of RNA that replicates using a self-encoded RNA replicase. The RNA diversifies into multiple coexisting host and parasite lineages, whose frequencies in the population initially fluctuate and gradually stabilize. The final population, comprising five RNA lineages, forms a replicator network with diverse interactions, including cooperation to help the replication of all other members. These results support the capability of molecular replicators to spontaneously develop complexity through Darwinian evolution, a critical step for the emergence of life.
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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.