We extend earlier cellular automata models of spatially extended hypercycles by including an explicit genetic component into the model. This allows us to study the sequence evolution of hypercyclically coupled molecular replicators in addition to considering their population dynamics and spatial organization. In line with previous models, that considered either spatial organization or sequence evolution alone, we find both temporal oscillations of the relative concentration of the species forming the hypercycles as well as the formation of spatial organisations including spiral waves. We also confirm the greatly increased robustness of the spatially extended hypercycle against various classes of parasites. We find the sequence evolution of each of the hypercyclically coupled populations proceeds (after an inital selection-dominated phase) in a drift-like manner that can be described by a diffusion process in sequence space. Kimura's theory of neutral evolution is therefore applicable on long time-scales despite the fact that the hypercycle exhibits extreme periodic changes in population sizes and that are governed solely by frequency-dependent selection.

We show that replicator equations follow naturally from the exponential affine structure of the simplex known from information geometry. It is then natural to call replicator equations linear if their fitness function is affine. For such linear replicator equations an explicit solution can be found. The approach is also demonstrated for the example of Eigen’s hypercycle, where some new analytic results are obtained using the explicit solution.

This thesis is divided into two parts. The first part is concerned with the commutative algebra of certain combinatorial structures arising from uniform hypergraphs. The main focus lies on two particular classes of hypergraphs called chordal hypergraphs and complete hypergraphs, respectively. Both these classes arise naturally as generalizations of the corresponding well known classes of simple graphs. The classes of chordal and complete hypergraphs are introduced and studied in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 respectively. Chapter 4, that is the content of \cite{E5}, answers a question posed at the P.R.A.G.MAT.I.C. summer school held in Catania, Italy, in 2008. In Chapter 5 we study hypergraph analogues of line graphs and cycle graphs. Chapter 6 is concerned with a connectedness notion for hypergraphs and in Chapter 7 we study a weak version of shellability.The second part is concerned with affine monoids and their monoid rings. Chapter 8 provide a combinatorial study of a class of positive affine monoids that behaves in some sense like numerical monoids. Chapter 9 is devoted to the class of numerical monoids of maximal embedding dimension. A combinatorial description of the graded Betti numbers of the corresponding monoid rings in terms of the minimal generators of the monoids is provided. Chapter 10 is concerned with monomial subrings generated by edge sets of complete hypergraphs.