Comment

“More or less independently of the starting point ... the end point is a rather small molecule, some 200 bases long, with a particular sequence and structure that enable it to be replicated particularly rapidly.
In this simple and well-defined system, natural selection does not lead to continuing change, still less to anything that could be recognized as an increase in complexity: it leads to a stable and rather simple end point.
This raises the following simple, and I think unanswered question: What features must be present in a system if it is to lead to indefinitely continuing evolutionary change?”
[Maynard Smith 88]

“More or less independently of the starting point ... the end point is a rather small molecule, some 200 bases long, with a particular sequence and structure that enable it to be replicated particularly rapidly.