Article révisé par les pairs
Résumé : | The existing experimental data on prebiotic nonenzymic biopolymer synthesis is used to construct a model which shows autocatalysis and highly nonlinear behavior. It is shown that far from thermodynamic equilibrium such systems may exhibit multiple steady states favoring the enhancement of the polymer population in the medium. The role of step by step chain propagation and template directed autocatalysis are studied and contrasted. Copyright © 1972 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. |