Figure 6.

Initiation of RNA reproduction by iterative template-directed ligation. The simulation was repeated 100 times with 300X initial RNAs for 100,000X reaction steps. Each value was plotted against different diversities of an initial RNA population X. (a) Schematic representation of the template-directed ligation reaction. (b) Average ligation number per population size (300X) when ligation occurs. (c) Probability that at least one autocatalytic network formed and collective reproduction occurred during a simulation. (d) Probability that no autocatalytic network formed but self-reproduction of an RNA occurred. (e) Maximum network size of emerged autocatalytic networks. In all panels, the error bars indicate standard errors.