Simulating the origins of life: The dual role of RNA replicases as an obstacle to evolution

Abstract

Despite years of study, it is still not clear how life emerged from inanimate matter and evolved into the complex forms that we observe today. One of the most recognized hypotheses for the origins of life, the RNA World hypothesis, assumes that life was sparked by prebiotic replicating RNA chains. In this paper, we address the problems caused by the interplay between hypothetical prebiotic RNA replicases and RNA parasitic species. We consider the coexistence of parasite RNAs and RNA replicases as well as the impact of parasites on the further evolution of replicases. For these purposes, we used multi-agent modeling techniques that allow for realistic assumptions regarding the movement and spatial interactions of modeled species. The general model used in this study is based on work by Takeuchi and Hogeweg. Our results confirm that the coexistence of parasite RNAs and replicases is possible in a spatially extended system, even if we take into consideration more realistic assumptions than Takeuchi and Hogeweg. However, we also showed that the presence of trade-off that takes into the account an RNA folding process could still pose a serious obstacle to the evolution of replication. We conclude that this might be a cause for one of the greatest transitions in life that took place early in evolution—the separation of the function between DNA templates and protein enzymes, with a central role for RNA species.

Ecology and Evolution in the RNA World Dynamics and Stability of Prebiotic Replicator Systems

“…Wherever parasites take over locally, they stop monomer production and thus, indirectly, they commit suicide by disrupting their own monomer supply and starving themselves to death. This result is in line with that of Szostak et al [ 112 ], whose model predicts parasite invasion in a replicase ribozyme population but without the parasites destroying the system. The coexistence of a replicase ribozyme and its parasitic quasispecies in a multilevel selection regime has also been demonstrated in [ 113 ].…”

Submit a Topic Page to PLOS Computational Biology and Wikipedia

“…During work on one of our recent projects [ 5 ], myself and my colleagues searched for sources describing a key concept that our work touched upon—the hypercycle. We found out that there is a vast amount of literature on this subject written by excellent researchers, but despite this, and despite the undeniable importance of the hypercycle theory for the computational and mathematical approaches related to the origin of life, a comprehensive summary of current knowledge on the topic was missing.…”

Multi-agent approach to sequence structure simulation in the RNA World hypothesis

“…The above mentioned replicase-parasite surface model developed by Takeuchi and Hogeweg was deepened and refined in [ 25 ], where more general approach based on multi-agent systems (MAS) with more realistic assumptions regarding the movement of entities (diffusion) has been proposed. MAS consists of a set of agents capable of making autonomous decisions and interacting in a given dynamic environment.…”