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Cooperation is essential for evolution of biological complexity. Recent work has shown game theoretic arguments, commonly used to model biological cooperation, can also illuminate the dynamics of chemical systems. Here we investigate the types of cooperation possible in a real

Cooperation is essential for evolution of biological complexity. Recent work has shown game theoretic arguments, commonly used to model biological cooperation, can also illuminate the dynamics of chemical systems. Here we investigate the types of cooperation possible in a real RNA system based on the Azoarcus ribozyme, by constructing a taxonomy of possible cooperative groups. We construct a computational model of this system to investigate the features of the real system promoting cooperation. We find triplet interactions among genotypes are intrinsically biased towards cooperation due to the particular distribution of catalytic rate constants measured empirically in the real system. For other distributions cooperation is less favored. We discuss implications for understanding cooperation as a driver of complexification in the origin of life.

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    Title
    • Prebiotic RNA Network Formation: A Taxonomy of Molecular Cooperation
    Contributors
    Date Created
    2017-10-16
    Resource Type
  • Text
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    Identifier
    • Digital object identifier: 10.3390/life7040038
    • Identifier Type
      International standard serial number
      Identifier Value
      2075-1729

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    Mathis, C., Ramprasad, S., Walker, S., & Lehman, N. (2017). Prebiotic RNA Network Formation: A Taxonomy of Molecular Cooperation. Life, 7(4), 38. doi:10.3390/life7040038

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