The basic reproductive ratio of life

JOURNAL OF THEORETICAL BIOLOGY

卷:263

Article

Manapat, Michael L.^1,2  Chen, Irene A.³  Nowak, Martin A.^1,4,5 

[1] Harvard Univ, Program Evolutionary Dynam, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA

[2] MIT, Dept Math, Cambridge, MA 02139 USA

[3] Harvard Univ, FAS Ctr Syst Biol, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA

[4] Harvard Univ, Dept Math, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA

[5] Harvard Univ, Dept Organism & Evolutionary Biol, Cambridge, MA 02138 USA

关键词: Prelife;    Replication;    Template-directed synthesis;    Evolutionary dynamics;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.jtbi.2009.12.020

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

Template-directed polymerization of nucleotides is believed to be a pathway for the replication of genetic material in the earliest cells. We assume that activated monomers are produced by prebiotic chemistry. These monomers can undergo spontaneous polymerization, a system that we call prelife. Adding template-directed polymerization changes the equilibrium structure of prelife if the rate constants meet certain criteria. In particular, if the basic reproductive ratio of sequences of a certain length exceeds one, then those sequences can attain high abundance. Furthermore, if many sequences replicate, then the longest sequences can reach high abundance even if the basic reproductive ratios of all sequences are less than one. We call this phenomenon subcritical life. Subcritical life suggests that sequences long enough to be ribozymes can become abundant even if replication is relatively inefficient. Our work on the evolution of replication has interesting parallels to infection dynamics. Life (replication) can be seen as an infection of prelife. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

【 授权许可】

Free