More and more replicators were built from the finite supply of building-block molecules in the primordial soup, and these molecules were gradually used up. However, mistakes in the copying process led to ‘daughter’ replicators that had a slightly different configuration than their ‘parent.’ These new configurations meant that some ‘daughters’ were able to copy themselves faster, or more accurately, giving them a competitive advantage over their ‘parent.’ The first replicator automatically had a competitive advantage over all the other molecules in the primordial soup because they could not copy themselves, and hence the replicator became more numerous than any other type of molecule. Replicators copy themselves by attracting other ‘letters’ and acting as a template for them to match up to. Molecular replicators are made up of long chains of smaller building-block molecules in the same way that a word is made up of a string of letters. Over 3.5 billion years ago, in a primordial soup of molecules, the first, simplest form of life on earth came to be: a molecule able to copy itself, a replicator. Evolution is driven by varying abilities and limited resources.
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