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arXiv · 1612.00825

Primordial Sex Facilitates the Emergence of Evolution

Sam Sinai·Jason Olejarz·Iulia A. Neagu·Martin A. Nowak
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Abstract

Compartments are ubiquitous throughout biology, yet their importance stretches back to the origin of cells. In the context of origin of life, we assume that a protocell, a compartment enclosing functional components, requires $N$ components to be evolvable. We take interest in the timescale in which a minimal evolvable protocell is produced. We show that when protocells fuse and share information, the time to produce an evolvable protocell scales algebraically in $N$, in contrast to an exponential scaling in the absence of fusion. We discuss the implications of this result for origins of life, as well as other biological processes.

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Sam Sinai, Jason Olejarz, Iulia A. Neagu, Martin A. Nowak. 2017-12-08. Primordial Sex Facilitates the Emergence of Evolution. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2018.0003

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