Kuhns Biogenesis Models

Niesert, 1987). The Freiburg group found three possible catastrophes, which can be summed up as follows  

The egoistic RNA this catastrophe occurs when, after a mutation, one RNA molecule learns to replicate faster than the others, forgetting to act as a catalyst. 

The short circuit this happens when an RNA molecule in the hypercycle is changed so much by mutation that it does not catalyse the next reaction in the chain, but a later one. The hypercycle is then short-circuited to become a simple cycle. 

Collapse when statistical variations cause one of the important components of the cycle to die off, the complete cycle collapses. 

Computer simulations showed that the first two of these catastrophes become more probable as the size of the molecular population increases. In order to avoid them, the population of a hypercycle would need to be kept as small as possible. The probability of collapse, however, decreases with increasing population. Because of these contradictions, Ursula Niesert gave one of her articles the title The Origin of Life between Scylla and Charybdis , because computer simulations indicate that there is only a small interval of hypercycle populations in which all three of the above catastrophes can be excluded. 

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Kuhn s biogenesis models were developed further (Kuhn and Kuhn, 2003). The basic principle remains unchanged replication first As before, no exact single steps are elaborated, but only the main aspects of the biogenesis process are dealt with. 

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