  We study the ability to maintain information in a population of reacting
polymers under the influence of decay, i.e., spontaneous breakdown of large
polymers. At a certain decay rate, it becomes impossible to maintain a
significant concentration of large polymers, while it is still possible to
maintain sets of smaller polymers that can maintain the same amount of
information. We use a genetic algorithm to evolve reaction sets to generate
specific polymer distributions under the influence of decay. In these evolved
reaction sets, the beginnings of hypercycle-type structures can be observed,
which are believed to have been an important step toward the evolution of the
first living cells.
