ArticleJournal of the Royal Society, Interface2026
From rule-taking to rule-making chemistry: a minimal population-environment feedback model.
Article in Journal of the Royal Society, Interface, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
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
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
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
A key step towards life is the shift from chemistry that merely adapts to its surroundings to chemistry that actively reshapes the local physicochemical conditions that rule its own replication. Using a coupled population-environment feedback model, we identify the conditions under which environment-modifying activity, once present, can become self-sustaining in mixed chemical populations. When environmental conditions adjust instantaneously to population composition, environmental influence leaves no lasting trace and modifiers can spread only if initially common. By contrast, when environmental modification persists over the timescale of population change, production and decay generate heritable local conditions that give rise to bistability and alternative long-term outcomes. This persistence enlarges the basin leading to sustained environmental control, suggesting that even simple feedbacks could have allowed early chemical systems to move beyond passive chemistry and begin constructing the conditions that support their own propagation.
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.