91-00-001
Complementary Replication
Peter F. Stadler
Differential equations for the kinetics of complementary replicating
macromolecules in a flow reactor are derived. It is shown that such a
model has many features in common with the differential equation for
direct replication, the replicator equation. Two special cases of
replication, and the influence of mutation on them, have been studied
in detail: In case of first order mass action kinetics - the
quasispecies model - complementary replication, like direct
replication, exhibits an error threshold for the replication accurary,
below which the genetic information is lost. In turns out that the
long time behaviour of many special cases of the second order kinetics
model can be described in terms of second order replicator equations,
although this is not possible in general.
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