In nature there's not only reproduction what we find, we have to build enzymes, and the enzymes have to be optimal catalysts. And the catalysis is not a reproduction reaction, you have all sorts of reactions, so you needed then a class of molecule which you can adapt to any reaction you need in your complicate system. And now comes the difficulty. What you have to keep is the information. And for that you have your reproduction below the error threshold. But what you want to test for is functional efficiency, and that you can only test with a given enzyme. So what you have to keep is the nucleic acid's information strength, but what you evaluate is the protein molecule, which is translated from the nucleic acid molecule. So I call that the genotype/phenotype dichotomy. In other words the phenotype, which is to be evaluated and found to be good or not good... not well adapted, has to tell its genotype, 'I'm a good one, keep my information and destroy the others'.
And that means you need an additional feedback loop. Before, we need one loop, replication, the plus strength makes a minus strength, the minus makes... this is a cycle really, reproduction cycle, yes, as you have it in quasispecies. Now you can also translate your information and the translation product has to feed back, has to tell 'I'm a good one', or 'I'm a bad one'. And that we called hypercycle.
[Q] So the hypercycle is, so to speak, a theoretical basis of life...
Yes.
[Q] On a very low, low, low level.
It serves two purposes. First of all it allows you to make... build up a network of genes, because the genes can't become longer than allowed by the error threshold, and here you can put together several through this loop, and secondly it allows you to overcome the genotype/phenotype dichotomy. And this was first a purely theoretical concept, but later on we found it experimentally.
[Q] Can you tell, what was the crucial experiment to verify this?
Well, I will tell that in more detail, but it was the infection of a cell by a virus particle... shows exactly this process and it's exactly of hypercyclic nature.
