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Figure 1 | Biology Direct

Figure 1

From: Evolution before genes

Figure 1

Classification of various network modules within autocatalytic sets. food1-food6: food set that is assumed to be present at all times, A-D: non-food species generated by ligation/cleavage reactions. Solid lines: reactions; dotted lines: catalytic activities. Orange dotted lines show the superimposed autocatalytic loops. (A) Viable autocatalysts (A in all three examples) are the necessary units needed for exponential growth of an autocatalyst, in contrast to suicidal autocatalysts (B in all three examples) that use reactants only produced by the autocatalytic reaction itself. (B) A molecular species can be directly autocatalytic, forming a one-member autocatalytic loop, or several species can form loops of various sizes that result in indirect autocatalysis. (C) A loop is autocatalytic - and able to grow exponentially - as long as at least one of the steps is a catalytic dependency. Therefore a loop can be made of solely catalytic or mixed couplings. (D) An autocatalytic core contains one or more linked loops. Note that any member of a core (A and B in all three examples) is sufficient to act as a seed for the core. Several distinct cores can form within a catalytic reaction network. Some can exist independently of other cores, while dependent cores rely on others as food supply or catalysts. (E) An autocatalytic core is typically associated with a periphery that is dependent on the core (C and D in first example). It is also possible that a molecular periphery appears only if two or more cores are present (D in second example). We propose that autocatalytic cores are the units of heritable adaptation in chemical networks.

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