ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2025
Thermodynamics of Darwinian selection in molecular replicators.
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
The trial behind it
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Natural Selection as a Process That Increases Metabolic Entropy Production? A Regime-Dependent Analysis in Open Chemostat Systems with Michaelis-Menten Kinetics and Mutation-Selection Dynamics.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Thermodynamics of Darwinian selection in molecular replicators.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Origins of life: the possible and the actual.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
Abstract
We consider the relationship between thermodynamics, fitness and Darwinian selection in autocatalytic molecular replicators. We uncover a thermodynamic bound that relates fitness, replication rate and thermodynamic affinity of replication. This bound applies to a broad range of systems, including elementary and non-elementary autocatalytic reactions, polymer-based replicators and certain kinds of autocatalytic sets. In addition, we show that the critical selection coefficient (the minimal fitness difference visible to selection) is bounded by a simple function of the affinity. Our results imply fundamental thermodynamic bounds on selection strength in molecular evolution, complementary to other bounds that arise from finite population sizes and error thresholds. These bounds may be relevant for understanding thermodynamic constraints faced by early replicators at the origin of life. We illustrate our approach on several examples, including a classic model of replicators in a chemostat.This article is part of the theme issue 'Origins of life: the possible and the actual'.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What 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.