Abstract
We study analytically the steady-state regime of a network of n error-prone self-replicating templates forming an asymmetric hypercycle and its error tail. We show that the existence of a master template with a higher noncatalyzed self-replicative productivity a than the error tail ensures the stability of chains in which templates coexist with the master species. The stability of these chains against the error tail is guaranteed for catalytic coupling strengths K on the order of a. We find that the hypercycle becomes more stable than the chains only if K is on the order of Furthermore, we show that the minimal replication accuracy per template needed to maintain the hypercycle, the so-called error threshold, vanishes as for large K and
- Received 26 July 1999
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.61.2996
©2000 American Physical Society