Evolutionary self-organization of cell-free genetic coding

Genetic encoding provides a generic construction scheme for biomolecular fu nctions. This paper addresses the key problem of coevolution and exploitati on of the multiple components necessary to implement a replicable genetic e ncoding scheme. Extending earlier results on multicomponent replication, th e necessity of spatial structure for the evolutionary stabilization of the genetic coding system is established. An individual-based stochastic model of interacting molecules in three-dimensional space is presented that allow s the evolution of genetic coding to be analyzed explicitly. A massively pa rallel configurable computer (NGEN) is used to implement the model, on the time scale of millions of generations, directly in electronic hardware. The spatial correlations between components of the genetic coding system are a nalyzed and found to be essential for evolutionary stability.