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Can prelife proceed without cell division? A recently proposed mechanismsuggests that transient compartmentalization could have preceded cell divisionin prebiotic scenarios. Here, we study transient compartmentalization dynamicsin the presence of mutations and noise in replication, as both can bedetrimental the survival of compartments. Our study comprises situations wherecompartments contain uncoupled autocatalytic reactions feeding on a commonresource, and systems based on RNA molecules copied by replicases, following arecent experimental study.  Using the theory of branching processes, we show analytically that tworegimes are possible. In the diffusion-limited regime, replication isasynchronous which leads to a large variability in the composition ofcompartments. In contrast, in a replication-limited regime, the growth issynchronous and thus the compositional variability is low. Typically, simpleautocatalysts are in the former regime, while polymeric replicators can accessthe latter.  For deterministic growth dynamics, we introduce mutations that turnfunctional replicators into parasites. We derive the phase boundary separatingcoexistence or parasite dominance as a function of relative growth, inoculationsize and mutation rate. We show that transient compartmentalization allowscoexistence beyond the classical error threshold, above which the parasitedominates. Our findings invite to revisit major prebiotic transitions, notablythe transitions towards cooperation, complex polymers and cell division.

The generality of transient compartmentalization and its associated error thresholds