The RNA world is “almost a logical necessity”, for example by the fact that aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases are not among the most ancient proteins [1]. Despite eminent attempts [2], [3] we still lack a generalized RNA replicase that would be able to unzip and copy general, long RNA templates, similar to the contemporary activity of, say, the Qβ replicase [4], made of protein. A way out could be the assembly, out of replicable shorter pieces, of a replicase and an associated ligase [5], encouraged by the recent finding of a collectively autocatalytic ligase-based RNA network [6]. Twenty years ago the possibility of an early evolution of a division of labor between gene () and enzymatic () RNA strands was raised: “The fate of both the plus () and minus () strands is important for the following discussion. If both strands are to be replicated, both of them must be recognized by the replicase: the 3′ and 5′ ends of the same strand must therefore be complementary (it is assumed that replication goes in the 5′→3′ direction as today). Interestingly, violation of such a complete symmetry opens up the possibility for a very early origin of “transcription” in the form of replication bias. If the plus strand is the gene, and the minus strand is the ribozyme, naturally it pays to make more enzymes than genes. If the tag of the minus ribozyme acts as a weaker target (owing to some point mutations, for example) for the replicase, this shift in “emphasis” is guaranteed” ([7], p. 448). The authors noted that there is such asymmetry in contemporary RNA viruses [8].

Besides their target affinity, the complementary strands of RNA molecules also have to be different regarding enzymatic activities. It is not inconceivable that complementary strands of RNAs can act as enzymes: Sergei Rodin has convincingly argued that this could have been the case for at least some tRNA [9] and aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase [10] species. It is thus biologically plausible to assume a system where both RNA strands would be weakly enzymatic, but in general this would imply different functions (unless the two strands are palindromic or the contexts in which the strands must act are highly comparable, as in the Rodin case). To conclude, a truly symmetric initial condition in enzymatic activities cannot be very common. Having said that, it is probable that one strand would lose the weak enzymatic function, whereas the complementary strand would be optimized for its enzymatic activity.

As it is likely that some surface-bound metabolic complexity preceded the advent of protocells (e.g. Ref. [11]), earliest ribozymes may also have acted on surfaces [12], [13], including evolving replicases [14]. It is in the context of such a surface-bound replicase population that the evolution of strand asymmetry has been dynamically investigated by the technique of cellular automata [15]: the authors have shown that strand asymmetry evolves (assuming a strand-displacement replication mechanism), but depending on diffusion and decay rates in a complex manner; sometimes genes rather than enzymes dominated the population. No model in the context of metabolically active ribozymes [13], [16] is known.

Here we address the problem of RNA strand asymmetry in the context of metabolically active ribozymes encapsulated in reproducing protocells, relying on the stochastic corrector model [12], [17] for the basic dynamics. There are two different ribozymes () that are assumed to be essential for protocell growth and reproduction (Figure 1). In contrast to previous treatments plus () and minus () strands are explicitly considered. For simplicity we assume that only minus strands are enzymatically active. All templates grow stochastically within each protocell, and protocells also grow and divide stochastically. There is selection at two levels: faster replicating templates within protocells have an advantage, but protocells with a balanced and adequately abundant ribozyme composition are favored [17]. Although we assume their existence, we do not explicitly model replicase molecules, except that a limited number of templates can be replicated at the same time. Their effect is assumed to allow for copying of plus strand from minus strands and vice versa, including neat strand separation (which is still an unsolved problem in the origin of life studies [18]). It is assumed that minus strands being copied cannot perform enzymatic function at the same time, due to the opening of the catalytic sites. The two ribozymes are assumed to contribute to the production of the nucleotide monomers of the RNAs. One of the ribozymes (type 1) transforms a source material available in the environment to intermediate , which in turn is transformed by the other ribozyme (type 2) to the monomer . The monomer is then consumed to build up the four different kinds of strands present in the vesicle. Concrete examples of similar ribozymes that could have helped sustain the RNA world have been successfully selected in vitro [19], including nucleoside synthesis, phosphorylation of nucleosides, activation of nucleotides, and processive RNA primer extension. The rates of these reactions are determined by the catalytic activities of the ribozymes. The enzymatic activities of the ribozymes are in trade-off with their replication rates (e.g., active ribozymes are more difficult to unfold due to a denser structure and substrate binding), and the relative replication rates compared to those of complementary strands are evolvable traits of the ribozymes. Both higher and lower relative replication rates of the minus strands are allowed to evolve. The traits can change at each replication due to mutations. When the within-vesicle concentration of RNAs reaches a critical level the vesicle splits into two and its content is divided randomly, without replacement, between the two resultant daughter vesicles. See Methods for details and Table 1 for parameters and their values used throughout this study.

Average copy number of plus strands can be reduced through evolution even to 1 or 2 gene strands per protocell in cases when trade-off is strong between replication and enzymatic rates. The survival of plus strands in such cases is ensured by the fact that they can be copied from the ribozymes. Figure 2 shows an example of such a successful division of labor between enzymes and genes. In Figure 3 we demonstrate that evolutionary trajectories converge to the same equilibrium ratio of division of labor from different initial states, even when the evolution of replication rates and enzymatic rates is not bound, but only limited by the trade-off function assumed, and when the replication affinity of the plus strand is also allowed to evolve (Figure 3). Less pronounced division of labor is observed for weaker trade-off between replication rate and metabolic efficiency (Figure 4A), for higher numbers of molecules per protocell (Figure 4B), and for higher food concentration and kinetic rate constants (Figure 4C). By far the strongest effect is that of the trade-off, which is understandable, since it is a trait that affects every ribozyme individually. The mild decrease with protocell size is due to the fact that if there are many RNA molecules in total, there are likely to be many enzymes present anyhow, thus the force of selection should decline with protocell size. Similarly, higher food concentrations and higher kinetic rate constants reduce the force of selection for very high enzymatic efficiency. We note that some division of labor evolves even with negligible trade-off: this we attribute to the metabolic cost of the templates. In short, for the same total template copy number, protocells harboring more enzymes than genes are better off than those with reversed proportions, since the former carry a smaller load of “useless” templates (redundant genes). This effect becomes more pronounced with low food concentrations and kinetic rate constants, as in these cases the selective advantage of protocells with more enzymes increases (Figure 4C). Of course, assortment load (i.e., the drop in average fitness due to the random loss of any essential gene after stochastic assortment of templates in the two daughter protocells), and the fact that high enzymatic efficiency can already be reached without evolving high rate of strand asymmetry, prevents the system from evolving stronger asymmetry without strong trade-off.

High degradation rates can narrow the potential for the evolution of pronounced division of labor. Extreme trade-off between replication and metabolic activity selects for only few gene strands per protocell, hence a higher degradation rate easily eliminates them, and the few new genes synthesized from the ribozymes as templates may well suffer a similar fate: in the end the ribozymes cannot increase in number either, so all in all higher degradation rates lead to weaker admissible trade-off and result in weaker strand asymmetry (Figure 5). Larger protocells could, however, survive at higher degradation rates, potentially allowing for strand differentiation at strong trade-offs (the lower right part of Figure 5, where populations do not survive at the parameter values employed).

Division of labor between genes and enzymes can only be partial in our model, as expected in an RNA-based system, since a complete replication cycle requires that both strands act as templates to some extent. Division of labor implies that entities required to perform two different tasks end up with one doing (mostly) one of the tasks while the other do the other task. In our case this means that one strand acts mostly as an enzyme, while the other acts mostly as an information carrier. As only one of the strands in our model has enzymatic activity, that strand can be called an enzyme. Both of the strands need to act as templates, otherwise information is lost, but as one of the strands mainly acts as template and does not have enzymatic activity, we can call this a gene.

We would like to note here, that division of labor does not require sharp, and full specialization in different tasks: intermediate degree of specialization with the interchangeability of task-performing entities suffices too [20]. The important point is that the gain in performance due to specialization in one task exceeds the cost of loss of performance due to specialization in another task [21]. Let us give two unrelated examples from biology to illustrate our point. In eusocial insects, such as bees, division of labor often implies high degree of specialization in different tasks, as for example the queen and the workers are quite different in morphology and in behavior. But among the workers there are behavioral, but no morphological, castes, groups that tend to perform different task (cleaning, foraging, tending the young, etc.) [22]. Moreover, in primitively eusocial wasps, like the Ropalidia marginata, even the queen cannot be distinguished from others except for the presence of well-developed ovaries [4]. The other example comes from clonal plants (such as strawberry), where the members are connected physiologically. In these plants, one “plant member” (called the ramet) may specialize in the uptake of belowground nutrients, and thus develop an extensive root system, while the other specializes in the capture of light and develops bigger leaves [5]. Only the relative investments change into shoot or root, but ramets still have both functioning root systems and leaves. In biology, it is thus common to observe intermediate levels of division of labor and functional specialization within the boundaries set by physiological and developmental constraints of an organism.

Chemical difference between the enzymes and the templates is not a requirement for division of labor between genetic and enzymatic functions. The present neat chemical distinction between genes (DNA) and enzymes (proteins) is a rather late invention. Comparative analysis of the genes involved in DNA replication [1], [2] and the age of protein domain fold required for dNTP synthesis [3] suggest that the emergence of DNA genome was a late phenomenon which could have happened after the LUCA, thus was most likely a successor to the RNA world. As the authors of a somewhat related theoretical work note: “DNA releases RNA from the trade-off between template and catalyst that is inevitable in the RNA world and thereby enhances the system's resistance against parasitic templates” [23] (p. 2). It is exactly this trade-off that drives the evolution of the division of labor in our protocellular system. (We note in passing that the analysis in Ref. [23] is not enough by itself to explain the advantage of DNA, since DNA molecules can also be selected to act as enzymes [24]).

We investigated the evolution of division labor between enzymatic and genetic strands based on the implicit assumption that minus and plus strands can have very different secondary structures. This indeed proves to be the case: on a sample of 10 million sequences, the distances between the secondary structures of minus and plus strands are slightly higher than those between pairs of randomly generated sequences (Figure 6A). Furthermore, there is asymmetry in the complexity of secondary structures (Figure 6A, C, D); and the difference between the free energies of folding can reach levels up to 20 kcal/mol (Figure 6B). Thus, there is a fraction of complementary, folded strand pairs for which one member is more readily opened by a replicase than the other, due to the looser structure of the former (Figure 6C). Here we have only considered the minimum free energy (MFE) structures of the RNAs. It is known that there are suboptimal structures that could be quite close energetically to the MFE structure [25], and thus provide additional ways in which the two strands can be different (albeit evolution can lead to well-defined structures with little ambiguity in their energetically close sub-optimal structures [26]). Co-folding of the RNA with smaller RNAs can further increase the structural diversity of RNAs [27], again possibly promoting functional diversification of the strands. Our conservative estimate of structural difference is sufficient for strand separation, and incorporation of further mechanisms can further foster the effect demonstrated above.

The origin of basic genetic operations, including replication and transcription, belongs to the key questions of the origin of life. While there has been considerable progress with template copying [2], [3], unzipping remains an open problem [18] (but see [28]). In this paper we have shown that once evolution had reached the stage of reproducing compartments with unlinked ribozymes inside, division of labor between enzymatic and gene strands readily followed provided there was moderate to strong tradeoff between the enzymatic and template efficiency of ribozymes. This is to be expected due to the tightly folded structure of ribozymes (for example the Qβ replicase replicates the X-motif ribozyme [29] very slowly compared to other, less complex secondary structures; A. Griffiths, personal communication). Furthermore, analysis of the minimum free energy structures of real ribozymes and aptamers indicates that there is a tendency of them being more thermodynamically stable than random sequences (81.9% are more stable than half of the random sequences; 59.6% are more stable than 75% of the random sequences; and 27,5% are more stable than 95% of the random sequences). This transcription-like process could have been augmented by the evolution of tags recognized by the replicase as envisaged by Szathmáry and Maynard Smith [7], although we have not included this component in the present model. We conclude that division of labor between genes and enzymes was under strong positive selection in the RNA world.