Which Came First? DNA before Life or Life before DNA?

How can life originate before DNA and genes? One possibility is that there are natural processes that lead to the organisation of simple physical objects such as small microcapsules that undergo rudimentary forms of interaction, self-organisation and information processing.

An inter-disciplinary team from the University of Bristol involving Rich Carter, Dr Karoline Wiesner and Professor Stephen Mann from the Bristol Centre for Complexity Sciences, School of Mathematicsand School of Chemistry has developed computer simulations that demonstrate how interactions between simple mathematical “objects” (automata) can lead to the self-organisation of robust, cooperative networks of interacting populations capable of mutual reproduction, competition and selective extinction.

Each community represents an information niche, which remains stable under fixed conditions but transforms into a new niche when the environmental conditions are changed.

Computer image showing the emergence of a spatially organised information niche. A million random interactions within the population leads to selection of certain automata which become located in different parts of the simulated niche (red and blue regions)