Scientists at the University of Bristol (UK) using a mathematical model proved that before the appearance of life, there was competition between simple chemical reactions. This promoted an analogue of natural selection, which made it possible to consolidate successful changes in macromolecules and weed out harmful ones. An article by scientists was published in the Journal of The Royal Society Interface.
According to the theory of the German physicochemist Manfred Eigen, before the appearance of life on Earth, there were so-called hypercycles - stable chemical cycles consisting of several groups of self-reproducing macromolecules and possessing signs of living.
According to the scientist, this contributed to the emergence of large organic compounds, which would otherwise be vulnerable to harmful mutations and would disappear. In the hypercycle, the defective mutants are eliminated. However, it is unclear how in hypercycles, where there was no DNA or RNA, evolution could occur, which would lead to the emergence of real organisms.
A model called the finitary process soup assumes the existence of self-sustaining chemical processes called ɛ-machines (automata). The automaton can be represented as an input-output channel: at the input, the ɛ-machine can include one state, and at the output, another. In total, the study studied the behavior of 15 types of automata, the interaction between which can give rise to a new ɛ-machine.
Scientists conducted computer simulations of unstable conditions in which some automata were more common than others. Each such environment, called an information niche, contained 90,000 ɛ-machines. Over time, the niche changed, as some automata disappeared, being replaced by others, which gave rise to a kind of natural selection. Some varieties of ɛ-machines completely died out, but eventually the niche became stable, which implied peaceful coexistence between the machines.
As the researchers believe, before the appearance of life on Earth, primitive chemical processes took place in water bodies that functioned as ɛ-machines. The results of the study showed that evolutionary processes necessary for the emergence of such complex objects as cells could already take place in their "population".
