Regensburg 2016 – scientific programme

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SOE: Fachverband Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme

SOE 5: Evolutionary Game Theory (joint session SOE / BP / DY)

SOE 5.4: Talk

Monday, March 7, 2016, 13:00–13:15, H36

Stepwise cooperation of molecular replicators — •Georg Urtel and Dieter Braun — Systems Biophysics, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Amalienstr. 54, D- 80799 München, Germany

Life emerged from the ability of informational polymers to pass on sequences to other polymers before they degrade. Before competition between living species, the first selection pressure was to replicate faster than degradation. What were the strategies the molecules could take?

Based on biological evidence, DNA or RNA replicators require a defined binding site to start replication. We study experimentally and theoretically three geometries of the binding site: linear single binding, hairpin binding and two opposing binding locations. The geometries have fundamentally different, increasing replication speeds.

Interestingly, two hairpin replicators cooperate readily and form the fastest replicating geometry. After incomplete replication, they bind by hybridization and cooperate by forming a crossbreed species. This cooperation of two replicators retains most of the sequence information of both hairpins. Under conditions where hairpins are doomed to degrade, their crossbreed is replicating fast enough to survive. As a result, two initially separated hairpins survive by diffusional mixing and the colocalized crossbreeding.

Our experiments show a stepwise evolution of replicator geometries. Already at a molecular level, cooperation was an advantageous strategy under Darwinian evolution.