E. Szathmary, A CLASSIFICATION OF REPLICATORS AND LAMBDA-CALCULUS MODELS OF BIOLOGICAL ORGANIZATION, Proceedings - Royal Society. Biological Sciences, 260(1359), 1995, pp. 279-286
W. Fontana and L. W. Buss (Proc. Natn. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 91, 757 (1994
) and Bull. math. Biol. 56, 1 (1994)) have put forward a scheme for a
theory of biological organization based on the lambda-calculus. Their
key innovation was to represent, with the aid of this calculus, a cert
ain minimal chemistry. Although this idea is very promising, their con
crete formulation could be improved if suggestions for the following i
tems were incorporated: (i) a better coding of chemical reactions; (ii
) a reinterpretation of the evolutionary behaviour of autocatalytic ch
emical networks; (iii) a better appreciation of morphological and gene
tic factors; (iv) a more complete embedding of the theory into the bac
kground of relevant earlier contributions. Confusion can be stopped by
the application of a proper classification of replicators (important
categories being: processive and modular, limited and unlimited heredi
tary replicators). Suggestions to facilitate improvement are made expl
icit in this paper. The most challenging task would be to model the tr
ansition from processive, limited hereditary replicators to modular re
plicators with limited and unlimited heredity.