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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
. 1994 Jan 18;91(2):757–761. doi: 10.1073/pnas.91.2.757

What would be conserved if "the tape were played twice"?

W Fontana 1, L W Buss 1
PMCID: PMC43028  PMID: 8290596

Abstract

We develop an abstract chemistry, implemented in a lambda-calculus-based modeling platform, and argue that the following features are generic to this particular abstraction of chemistry; hence, they would be expected to reappear if "the tape were run twice": (i) hypercycles of self-reproducing objects arise; (ii) if self-replication is inhibited, self-maintaining organizations arise; and (iii) self-maintaining organizations, once established, can combine into higher-order self-maintaining organizations.

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Selected References

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

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