  A poorly understood step in the transition from a chemical to a biological
world is the emergence of self-replicating molecular systems. We study how a
precursor for such a replicator might arise in a hydrothermal RNA reactor,
which accumulates longer sequences from unbiased monomer influx and random
ligation. In the reactor, intra- and inter-molecular basepairing locally
protects from random cleavage. By analyzing stochastic simulations, we find
temporal sequence correlations that constitute a signature of information
transmission, weaker but of the same form as in a true replicator.
