A solvable selfreproductive hypercycle model for the selection of biological molecules

Summary By introducing a modified enzyme coupling in Eigen's hypercycle equations we have produced an exactly solvable selfreproductive hypercycle model. The model shows explicitly how collections of different macromolecular information carriers may coexist, through internal couplings, in the presence of constraints. We show how the selective value concept is manifested in the model and give simple criteria for selection among competing hypercycles.