Figure 3.

Schematic drawing of the TcRR system under bulk or compartmentalized conditions. (A) Under bulk conditions, the replicases are shared among all the template RNA, and thus even a mutant template RNA that encodes inactive replicase can replicate using an active replicase translated from another template RNA. (B) Under compartmentalized conditions, each template RNA can use only the replicase translated from itself, and thus a mutant template RNA that encodes an inactive RNA replicase cannot replicate.