Phenotype/genotype sequence complementarity and prebiotic replicator coexistence in the metabolically coupled replicator system

BMC Evolutionary Biology

Research Article

Balázs Könnyű¹  Tamás Czárán² 

[1] Department of Plant Systematics, Ecology and Theoretical Biology, Eötvös Loránd University, Pázmány Péter sétány 1/c, 1117, Budapest, Hungary;MTA-ELTE Theoretical Biology and Evolutionary Ecology Research Group, Eötvös Loránd University, Pázmány Péter sétány 1/c, 1117, Budapest, Hungary;

关键词: Prebiotic evolution;    Replicator;    RNA World;    Coexistence;    Complementary RNA strains;    Phenotype;    Genotype;    Template replication;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12862-014-0234-8

 received in 2014-08-04, accepted in 2014-11-06,  发布年份 2014

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundRNA or RNA-like polymers are the most likely candidates for having played the lead roles on the stage of the origin of life. RNA is known to feature two of the three essential functions of living entities (metabolism, heredity and membrane): it is capable of unlimited heredity and it has a proven capacity for catalysing very different chemical reactions which may form simple metabolic networks. The Metabolically Coupled Replicator System is a class of simulation models built on these two functions to show that an RNA World scenario for the origin of life is ecologically feasible, provided that it is played on mineral surfaces. The fact that RNA templates and their copies are of complementary base sequences has an obvious dynamical relevance: complementary strains may have very different structures and, consequently, functions – one may specialize for increasing enzymatic activity while the other takes the role of the gene of the enzyme.ResultsIncorporating the functional divergence of template and copy into the Metabolically Coupled Replicator System model framework we show that sequence complementarity 1) does not ruin the coexistence of a set of metabolically cooperating replicators; 2) the replicator system remains resistant to, but also tolerant with its parasites; 3) opens the way to the evolutionary differentiation of phenotype and genotype through a primitive version of phenotype amplification.ConclusionsThe functional asymmetry of complementary RNA strains results in a shift of phenotype/genotype (enzyme/gene) proportions in MCRS, favouring a slight genotype dominance. This asymmetry is expected to reverse due to the evolved trade-off of high “gene” replicability and high catalytic activity of the corresponding “enzyme” in expense of its replicability. This trade-off is the first evolutionary step towards the “division of labour” among enzymes and genes, which has concluded in the extreme form of phenotype amplification characteristic of our recent DNA-RNA-protein World.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Konnyu and Czaran; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2014. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.