V. Life's Corporeal Evolution Develops, Encodes and Organizes Itself: An Earthtwinian Genesis Synthesis

1. The Origins of Life

Cronin, Leroy and Sara Imari Walker. Beyond Prebiotic Chemistry. Science. 352/1174, 2016. A University of Glasgow chemist and Arizona State University astrophysicist contribute to the nascent revolution in origin of life studies, akin to other fields such as genomics, that after a long period of identifying elemental pieces like rudimentary RNA, a presence of equally real dynamic networks which serve to organize and vitalize need be factored in. This advance to join components and connections, along with their informational content, augurs for finding “universal laws of life.” Search for the Philippe Nghe, et al paper Prebiotic Network Evolution for another example.

How can matter transition from the nonliving to the living state? The answer is essential for understanding the origin of life on Earth and for identifying promising targets in the search for life on other planets. Most studies have focused on the likely chemistry of RNA (1), protein (2), lipid, or metabolic “worlds” (3), and autocatalytic sets (4), including attempts to make life in the lab. But these efforts may be too narrowly focused on the biochemistry of life as we know it today. A radical rethink is necessary, one that explores not just plausible chemical scenarios but also new physical processes and driving forces. Such investigations could lead to a physical understanding not only of the origin of life but also of life itself, as well as to new tools for designing artificial biology. (Summary)

D'Eugeno, Francesco, et al. D'Eugenio, Francesco, et al. JADES: Carbon enrichment 350 Myr after the Big Bang in a gas-rich galaxy.. arXiv:2311.09908. As the awesome Webb telescope continues to send fantastic images from the outermost reaches of space and time, UK, USA, Australia, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Spain report a deeper probe into the onset appearance of metallic elements and compounds which can innately engender a fertile prebiotic milieu. Into 2024 then as one may be a viewer of this ecosmic planetarium, the whole show seems to have an essential, independent life and mind of its own

Finding the first generation of metals in the early Universe and identifying their origin is an important goal of modern astrophysics. In regard, we report deep JWST/NIRSpec spectroscopy of a GS-z12 galaxy as the most distant detection of a metal transition and redshift via emission lines. We derive a super-solar carbon-to-oxygen ratio higher than the C/O measured in galaxies discovered by JWST, and higher than Type-II supernovae enrichment. Such a high C/O in a galaxy observed 350 Myr after the Big Bang may be explained by the yields of metal poor stars, and may even be the heritage of the first generation of supernovae from Population III progenitors. (Excerpt)

The appearance of the first galaxies marks a key phase transition of the Universe with the start of stellar nucleosynthesis and the diffusion of metals. Extensive theoretical work has been devoted to predicting the properties of the first generation of stars and their supernova yield. The launch of JWST enabled, for the first time, the measurement of the physical properties of galaxies. These are generally understood in terms of decreasing gas metallicity and increasing density, ionisation parameter, temperature and stochasticity of their star-formation histories. (1)

Danger, Gregiore, et al. On the Conditions for Mimicking Natural Selection in Chemical Systems. Nature Reviews Chenistry. 4/102, 2020. Aix-Marseille Universite, CNRS physical chemists including Robert Pascal provide a latest contribution to an integral synthesis of substantial, self-organizing agencies with nature’s winnowing optimization processes from many variant candidates. An array of ensuing biomolecular constraints then need be factored into origin of life scenarios.

The emergence of natural selection which requires that reproducing entities have variations that may be inherited and passed on, was an important breakthrough in the self-organization of life. In this Perspective, the assumptions about biological reproduction are confronted with known physico-chemical principles that control the evolution of material systems. Here we see that chemical replicators can behave in a similar fashion to living entities, provided that the reproduction cycle proceeds in a unidirectional way. For this to be the case, the system must be held far from equilibrium and fed with a non-degraded (low-entropy) form of energy. (Abstract excerpt)

Davies, Paul. Quantum Mechanics and the Origin of Life. Norris, Ray and Stootman, Frank, eds. Bioastronomy 2002: Life Among the Stars. San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 2004. Cosmologist Davies notes that as a bio-friendly universe is increasingly recognized, a sufficient explanation for its evolving life may involve and require quantum properties such as superposition and entanglement, which can give rise to a meaningful semantics. See also Davies' popular update "The Ascent of Life" in the New Scientist for December 11, 2004.

In this paper I conjecture that life, defined as an information processing and replicating system, may be exploiting the considerable efficiency advantages offered by quantum computation, and that quantum information processing may dramatically shorten the odds for life originating from a random chemical soup. (237)

Davies, Paul. The Fifth Miracle. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999. Research on the advent of life has lately matured to a point where an overall review can connect this event with the elemental properties of the universe. The phenomena of self-organization and informed complex systems are seen to imply emergent life is a natural, intended presence. Davies goes on to say that we seem on the verge of a grand shift from an older comatose cosmos to an organic universe presently giving birth to its sentient human phase.

The search for life elsewhere in the universe is therefore the testing ground for two diametrically opposed world-views. On one side is orthodox science, with its nihilistic philosophy of the pointless universe, of impersonal laws oblivious of ends, a cosmos in which life and mind, science and art, hope and fear are but fluky incidental embellishments on a tapestry of irreversible cosmic corruption. On the other, there is an alternative view, undeniably romantic but perhaps true nevertheless, the vision of a self-organizing and self-complexifying universe, governed by ingenious laws that encourage matter to evolve towards life and consciousness. A universe in which the emergence of thinking beings is a fundamental and integral part of the overall scheme of things. (272-73)

De Duve, Christian. Singularities: Landmarks on the Pathways of Life. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005. The Nobel laureate biochemist explains the latest findings on life’s origin, which are seen mostly as an inevitable result of “deterministic” physical-chemical propensities. Multicellular flora and fauna arose from singular phenomena such as a common ancestor for nucleated, eukaryotic cells, and as offshoots of a single founding organism

de Duve, Christian. Vital Dust. New York: Basic Books, 1995. Noted elsewhere, the book is an authoritative exposition of the sequential Ages of Chemistry, Information, Protocells, Single Cell, Multicellular Organisms from which arises Mind and Humankind. And all this is seen to occur due to ingrained laws and properties.

De la Escosura, Andres. The Informational Substrate of Chemical Evolution. Life. Online August 8, 2019. A Universidad Autonoma of Madrid chemist group leader (search) contributes to “abiogenesis” studies, aka how could living organisms have arisen from seemingly inanimate or inorganic substrates, via novel perceptions that precursor biochemistries can similarly be understood to possess a semantic communicative quality. In regard, this earlier material phase or stage can thus accrue an inherent, lively genetic-like content. See also Permeability-driven Selection in a Semi-empirical Protocell Model: The Roots of Prebiotic Systems Evolution by Gabriel Piedrafita, et al in Nature Scientific Reports (7/3141, 2017) for a companion Spanish study.

A key aspect of biological evolution is the capacity of living systems to process information coded in DNA. The overall picture indicates that information processing in cells occurs through a hierarchy of genes regulating other genes through metabolic networks. There is an implicit semiotic character based on functional molecules that act as signs to self-regulate the whole network. In contrast to cells, chemical systems not seen as able to process information, yet they have preceded biological organisms, and evolved into them. Hence, there must have been prebiotic molecular assemblies that could regulate their constituent reactions and supramolecular organization processes. This essay will consider distinctive features of information in living and non-living matter, and how the capacity of biological information processing might be rooted in an autonomous chemical system which could self-sustain and reproduce through organizational closure. (Abstract)

Deacon, Terrence. Reciprocal Linkage Between Self-organizing processes is Sufficient for Self-reproduction and Evolvability. Biological Theory. 1/2, 2006. (A new journal of theoretical biology from MIT Press.) A sophisticated organic dynamics are laid out whereof life complexifies to selectable stages in the minimum form of autocatalytical, bounded “autocells.” (or UR-cell if you wish.) These primal units are further distinguished by properties of information transfer, metabolism, and bounded containment.

Deamer, David. Assembling Life: How Can Life Begin on Earth and Other Habitable Planets? New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. The veteran UC Santa Cruz origins researches continues his lifelong flow of frontier volumes with ever better retrospective explanations. See also his Origin of Life: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford, 2020) for even more insights.

In Assembling Life, David Deamer continues to address how did non-living organic compounds assemble into the first forms of primitive cellular life? What was the source of those compounds and the energy that produced the nucleic acids? Did life begin in the ocean or in fresh water on terrestrial land masses? Deamer describes organic chemicals that were likely to be available in the prebiotic environment and the volcanic conditions that could drive their complexity. In a wider view the goal is to understand how life can begin on any habitable planet.

Deamer, David. First Life and Next Life. Technology Review. May/June, 2009. The University of California, Santa Cruz “research professor of biomolecular engineering” muses that life’s earthly origin might have involved five steps: a source of organic monomers; self-assembly of compartments and protocells; polymer synthesis; evolution of catalysts; and combinatorial chemistry of cellular vesicles. As regnant life, actually its informational capacity, lately reaches self-awareness so as to pass to human agency, a radical new phase can begin of the intentional design of synthetic genomes, cells, and organic forms.

The requirement of variation within a population means that the first life forms capable of evolution could not be random mixtures of replication molecules unable to assemble into discrete entities; instead, they would be systems of interacting molecules encapsulated in something like a cell. (68)

Deamer, David. First Life: Discovering the Connections between Stars, Cells, and How Life Began. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. The veteran University of California at Santa Cruz biochemist offers a current survey upon an area that when I began readings some fifty years ago was an inaccessible void. Today organism and cosmos move ever closer together as a unified continuum. Typical chapters include When Did Life Begin?, Energy and Life’s Origins, Self-Assembly and Emergence, Achieving Complexity, and A Grand Simulation of Prebiotic Earth.

This pathbreaking book explores how life can begin, taking us from cosmic clouds of stardust, to volcanoes on Earth, to the modern chemistry laboratory. Seeking to understand life’s connection to the stars, David Deamer introduces astrobiology, a new scientific discipline that studies the origin and evolution of life on Earth and relates it to the birth and death of stars, planet formation, interfaces between minerals, water, and atmosphere, and the physics and chemistry of carbon compounds. Deamer argues that life began as systems of molecules that assembled into membrane-bound packages. These in turn provided an essential compartment in which more complex molecules assumed new functions required for the origin of life and the beginning of evolution. (Publisher)

What I will propose in this book is an integrated set of ideas and themes that suggest a new way to think about the origins of life. The primary themes are cycles (wet and dry), compartments (self-assembled protocells), and combinatorial chemistry(how vesicles became complex). Taken together, these themes suggest a novel approach that is guided by the principle of sufficient complexity, in which the origin of life is understood as an emergent phenomenon that occurs when water, mineral surfaces, and atmospheric gases interact with organic compounds and a source of energy. (4)

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