On the exclusion of exponential autocatalysts by sub-exponential autocatalysts

Yann Sakref; Olivier Rivoire

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arXiv · 2312.14489

On the exclusion of exponential autocatalysts by sub-exponential autocatalysts

Yann Sakref·Olivier Rivoire

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Abstract

Selection among autocatalytic species fundamentally depends on their growth law: exponential species, whose number of copies grows exponentially, are mutually exclusive, while sub-exponential ones, whose number of copies grows polynomially, can coexist. Here we consider competitions between autocatalytic species with different growth laws and make the simple yet counterintuitive observation that sub-exponential species can exclude exponential ones while the reverse is, in principle, impossible. This observation has implications for scenarios pertaining to the emergence of natural selection.

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Yann Sakref, Olivier Rivoire. 2023-12-22. On the exclusion of exponential autocatalysts by sub-exponential autocatalysts. https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.14489

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