Complementary replication.

Differential equations for the kinetics of complementary replicating macromolecules in a flow reactor are derived. It is shown that such a model has many features in common with the differential equation for direct replication, the replicator equation. Two special cases of replication, and the influence of mutation on them, have been studied in detail. In the case of first-order mass action kinetics--the quasi-species model--complementary replication, like direct replication, exhibits an error threshold for the replication accuracy, below which the genetic information is lost. In turns out that the long-time behavior of many special cases of the second-order kinetics model can be described in terms of second-order replicator equations, although this is not possible in general.