The problem of information maintenance is central to the research on the origin of life. Prebiotic mutation rates were so high that they severely limited the length of information carrier sequences, constraining maintainable information. In turn, communities of short sequences are prone to competitive exclusion and freeriding, selfish, parasitic sequences. The critical mutation rate above which selection cannot maintain information is called the error threshold.

Using mathematical models and computer simulations, we examine what kinds of systems might have been able to persist despite all these obstacles.