Critical events of the origins of life

AbstractWe discuss some critical events of the origins of life using a mathematical model and simulation studies. We find that for a replicating population of RNA molecules participating in template-directed polymerization, the hitting and establishment of a high-fidelity replicator depends critically on the polymerase fitness and sequence specificity landscapes and on genome dimension. Probability of hitting is dominated by polymerase landscape curvature, whereas hitting time is dominated by genome dimension. Surface chemistries, compartmentalization, and decay increase hitting times. These results suggest replication to be the first ‘privileged function’ marking the start of Darwinian evolution, possibly in conjunction with clay minerals or preceded by metabolism, whose dynamics evolved mostly during the final period of the search.