A MODEL OF THE VIRUS-TYPE STRATEGY IN THE EARLY-STAGE OF ENCODED MOLECULAR EVOLUTION

Recent advances in evolutionary molecular engineering have revealed th at the essential nature of a ''virus'' in the evolutionary aspect is i ts bonding strategy for assignment of the phenotype to its genotype. B ased on the definition of ''virus''-type and ''cell''-type of the assi gnment strategy, we propose a virus-early/cell-late model of the histo ry of life. The first encoded protein is assumed to be a cofactor of r eplication ribozyme in the RNA world and to be bound to its genetic RN A. As such a virus-type strategy could introduce the Darwinian selecti on process into the hypercycle with translation, a hypercycle with vir us-like members could make the replicase protein and the translation s ystem gradually evolve together out of the RNA world without a proto-c ell. Moreover, they could evolve much faster by this virus-type strate gy than by a primitive cellular organism. (C) 1995 Academic Press Limi ted