Segré, Daniel, Dafna Ben-Eli, and Doron Lancet. “Prebiotic evolution of amphiphilic assemblies far from equilibrium.” In Bioastronomy 99 , vol. 213. 2000.
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The primordial emergence of biopolymers, agents of the genetic machinery in modern cells, is not less enigmatic than the emergence of genetic code itself. Here we discuss how potential early replicating protocellular systems based on rudimentary from inheritance, a “compositional genome”, could evolve towards the emergence of “alphabetic” polymers, predating the genetic code. A computer simulated evolutionary process based on our previously proposed kinetic model may help understand the appearance of chemical combinatorics through early natural selection.