Escape from Eigen's paradox for prebiotic genomes
This text mentions work from 2024 on. Those parts were partly written without a live literature search and have not been checked by an editor yet.
In plain words
Copying without enzymes is sloppy, so only short sequences survive copying errors, yet an accurate copying enzyme needs a sequence long enough to encode it. A 2026 RNA enzyme only 45 letters long narrowed this gap, and which mechanism kept genetic information intact over many generations is still open.
Precise statement
With nonenzymatic copying fidelity $q \sim 0.9\ \text{to}\ 0.99$ per nucleotide, $L_{\max} \sim \ln(\sigma)/(1 - q)$ is tens to about a hundred nucleotides; polymerase ribozymes derived from the class I ligase are about 200 nucleotides long, while the 45-nucleotide QT45 ribozyme (Science 2026) copies at $q = 0.941$, giving $L_{\max} \sim 17 \ln(\sigma)$. Find a mechanism (compartments with group selection, hypercycles, template-directed ligation of short oligomers, spatial structure on surfaces) that maintains information content exceeding $L_{\max}$ over many replication rounds, stable against parasitic sequences, for a replicase that copies itself from mononucleotides or mixed-length feedstocks, with parameters measured in prebiotic chemistry.
What would settle it
A quantitative model with experimentally measured copying, ligation and compartment-division rates showing maintained information above $L_{\max}$, ideally confirmed in an experiment.
Status in the literature
Unverified note: it names recent work and was partly written without a live literature search; it awaits a check by an editor.
A 45-nucleotide polymerase ribozyme (2026) brought the replicator size close to the error threshold; maintenance against parasites over many rounds has not been demonstrated.
Parent problems
- Special case of How chemistry produced the first evolving replicator · open · from revision 1
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