Group selection models in prebiotic evolution

The evolution of enzyme production is studied analytically using ideas of the group selection theory for the evolution of altruistic behavior. In particular, we argue that the mathematical formulation of Wilson’s structured deme model [The Evolution of Populations and Communities (Benjamin-Cumings, Menlo Park, 1980)] is a mean-field approach in which the actual environment that a particular individual experiences is replaced by an average environment. That formalism is further developed so as to avoid the mean-field approximation and then applied to the problem of enzyme production in the prebiotic context, where the enzyme producer molecules play the altruists role while the molecules that benefit from the catalyst without paying its production cost play the nonaltruists role. The effects of synergism (i.e., division of labor) as well as of mutations are also considered and the results of the equilibrium analysis are summarized in phase diagrams showing the regions of the space of parameters where the altruistic, nonaltruistic, and the coexistence regimes are stable. In general, those regions are delimitated by discontinuous transition lines which end at critical points.