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Accepted · first revision · record

Title: How chemistry produced the first evolving replicator
Plain: Somewhere between simple molecules and the first cell, a chemical system began copying itself with variations that natural selection could act on. Which physical and chemical steps achieved this is unknown.
Precise: Identify a sequence of chemically and geologically plausible steps, with rates under stated early-Earth conditions (temperature, pH, mineral surfaces, wet-dry cycles), that takes a mixture of small prebiotic molecules to a population of informational polymers that replicate with heritable variation and undergo Darwinian selection. A complete answer specifies each step and demonstrates the chain in the laboratory or in a quantitative model with measured rate constants.
Settled by: A laboratory demonstration, starting from prebiotic feedstocks, of a polymer population that replicates and adapts under selection without enzymes from modern life.
Kind: phenomenon
Answer type: mechanism
References: (empty)
Literature status: open
Status note: (empty)
Posed since: (empty)