Skip to main content
NCBI home page
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America logoLink to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
. 1983 Jun;80(11):3386–3390. doi: 10.1073/pnas.80.11.3386

Suggested model for prebiotic evolution: the use of chaos.

P W Anderson
PMCID: PMC394048  PMID: 6190177

Abstract

I elaborate on an earlier model for prebiotic evolution by adding a selection function depending randomly on base-pair correlations along the replicating RNA chains. By analogy with the equilibrium statistics of spin glass, this should give a wide variety of metastable "species" that can mutate or combine symbiotically.

Full text

PDF
3386

Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

  1. Cairns-Smith A. G. The origin of life and the nature of the primitive gene. J Theor Biol. 1966 Jan;10(1):53–88. doi: 10.1016/0022-5193(66)90178-0. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  2. Eigen M., Schuster P. The hypercycle. A principle of natural self-organization. Part A: Emergence of the hypercycle. Naturwissenschaften. 1977 Nov;64(11):541–565. doi: 10.1007/BF00450633. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  3. Eigen M., Winkler-Oswatitsch R. Transfer-RNA, an early gene? Naturwissenschaften. 1981 Jun;68(6):282–292. doi: 10.1007/BF01047470. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  4. Hartman H. Speculations on the evolution of the genetic code. Orig Life. 1975 Jul;6(3):423–427. doi: 10.1007/BF01130344. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  5. Hopfield J. J. Origin of the genetic code: a testable hypothesis based on tRNA structure, sequence, and kinetic proofreading. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1978 Sep;75(9):4334–4338. doi: 10.1073/pnas.75.9.4334. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  6. Lohrmann R., Orgel L. E. Studies of oligoadenylate formation on a poly (U) template. J Mol Evol. 1979 Mar 15;12(3):237–257. doi: 10.1007/BF01732341. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  7. MILLER S. L., UREY H. C. Organic compound synthesis on the primitive earth. Science. 1959 Jul 31;130(3370):245–251. doi: 10.1126/science.130.3370.245. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  8. Prigogine I. Time, structure, and fluctuations. Science. 1978 Sep 1;201(4358):777–785. doi: 10.1126/science.201.4358.777. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
  9. Sleeper H. L., Orgel L. E. The catalysis of nucleotide polymerization by compounds of divalent lead. J Mol Evol. 1979 Apr 12;12(4):357–364. doi: 10.1007/BF01732030. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

Articles from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America are provided here courtesy of National Academy of Sciences

RESOURCES