{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/chemical-heredity-as-group-selection-at-the","title":"Chemical Heredity as Group Selection at the Molecular Level","arxiv_id":"1802.08024","date":"2018-02-22","proceeding":null,"authors":[],"abstract":"Many examples of cooperation exist in biology. In chemical systems however,\nwhich can sometimes be quite complex, we do not appear to observe intricate\ncooperative interactions. A key question for the origin of life, is then how\ncan molecular cooperation first arise in an abiotic system prior to the\nemergence of biological replication. We postulate that selection at the\nmolecular level is a driving force behind the complexification of chemical\nsystems, particularly during the origins of life. In the theory of multilevel\nselection the two selective forces are: within-group and between-group, where\nthe former tends to favor \"selfish\" replication of individuals and the latter\nfavor cooperation between individuals enhancing the replication of the group as\na whole. These forces can be quantified using the Price equation, which is a\nstandard tool used in evolutionary biology to quantify evolutionary change. Our\ncentral claim is that replication and heredity in chemical systems are subject\nto selection, and quantifiable using the multilevel Price equation. We\ndemonstrate this using the Graded Autocatalysis Replication Domain computer\nmodel, describing simple protocell composed out of molecules and its\nreplication, which respectively analogue to the group and the individuals. In\ncontrast to previous treatments of this model, we treat the lipid molecules\nthemselves as replicating individuals and the protocells they form as groups of\nindividuals. Our goal is to demonstrate how evolutionary biology tools and\nconcepts can be applied in chemistry and we suggest that molecular cooperation\nmay arise as a result of group selection. Further, the biological relation of\nparent-progeny is proposed to be analogue to the reactant-product relation in\nchemistry, thus allowing for tools from evolutionary biology to be applied to\nchemistry and would deepen the connection between chemistry and biology.","url_abs":"http://arxiv.org/abs/1802.08024v1","url_pdf":"http://arxiv.org/pdf/1802.08024v1.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[],"tasks":[],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[{"slug":"accompnaying-dataset-for-chemical-heredity-as","name":"Accompnaying Dataset for: Chemical Heredity as Group Selection at the Molecular Level","full_name":"Accompnaying Dataset for: Chemical Heredity as Group Selection at the Molecular Level"}],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"syntology_url":null,"atlas_url":null,"mcp":null,"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers"},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}