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MINIMAL RULES. "We demonstrate that for a catalytic network to accumulate adaptations it needs to be compartmentalized, the platonic reaction network must have multiple attractors, and some of these attractors must be selectable. The larger the number of attractors, the smaller the chance of convergence." https://lnkd.in/euzMX5X View in LinkedIn

POOR MAN'S NATURAL SELECTION. "Acquisition of cores by rare chemical events, and loss of cores at division, allows macromutation, limited heredity and selectability, thus explaining how a poor man's natural selection could have operated prior to genetic templates." https://lnkd.in/euzMX5X View in LinkedIn

CHEMICAL NETWORK CORES. "When many cores are enclosed in a compartment there is competition between cores within the same compartment, and when there are many compartments, there is between-compartment competition due to the phenotypic effects of cores and their periphery at the compartment level." https://lnkd.in/euzMX5X View in LinkedIn

CHEMICAL BESTIARY. "We conclude that only when a chemical reaction network consists of many such viable cores, can it be evolvable." https://lnkd.in/euzMX5X View in LinkedIn

ADAPTING CHEMICAL NETWORKS. "We cannot confirm previous claims that autocatalytic sets of organic polymer molecules could undergo evolution in any interesting sense by themselves. Instead, we discovered that if general conditions are satisfied, the accumulation of adaptations in chemical reaction networks can occur. These conditions are the existence of rare reactions producing viable cores (analogous to a genotype), that sustains a molecular periphery (analogous to a phenotype)." https://lnkd.in/euzMX5X View in LinkedIn

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS. "However, using the minimal model of polymer chemistry as a popular example, we outline the very general requirements that enable reaction networks to act as units of evolution, whatever the underlying chemistry used." https://lnkd.in/euzMX5X View in LinkedIn

WE ARE MADE OF STARS. “More than ninety percent of the universe is composed of hydrogen and helium. Both elements have been around since shortly after the beginning of the universe.” https://lnkd.in/dK6WMcp View in LinkedIn

UNLIKELY OUTCOME. "Can autocatalytic sets, as originally conceived, be units of evolution? Our answer is no." https://lnkd.in/euzMX5X View in LinkedIn

STUNNING REALIZATION. “All the carbon required for life to exist is synthesized in stars.” (Professor Sir Fred Hoyle, brilliant deceased chair of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University, whose members included Stephen Hawking). https://lnkd.in/d84mun4 View in LinkedIn

UNITS OF EVOLUTION. "As John Maynard Smith put it: a population of units of evolution is "any population of entities with the properties of multiplication (one entity can give rise to many), variation (entities are not all alike, and some kinds are more likely to survive and multiply than others), and heredity (like begets like) will evolve." https://lnkd.in/euzMX5X View in LinkedIn