Is the transition from chemistry to biology a mystery?
Tóm tắt
Today most chemists think that the answer to how life on earth emerged is still unknown. They assume a gap between chemistry and biology that is still unbridged. For chemists, understanding the origin of life requires the experimental modeling of a process that bridges this gap. They will not consider the problem solved before they are able to perform such tasks. No gap appears when we are pursuing a less ambitious goal, namely, to present a sequence of hypothetical processes that lead to an apparatus with the basic structure and fundamental feature of the genetic apparatus of biosystems but strongly simplified. The modeled apparatus has the basic machinery of living entities. Its fundamental feature is Darwinian behavior. Living individuals have the power to evolve toward ever increasing complexity and intricacy if appropriate conditions are given. The task to understand life's origin as a rational process is closely related to the earlier attempts of the present author to design and construct supra-molecular machines. The skill of the experimentalist has to be replaced by the presence of very particular conditions given by chance in a very particular location. The resulting apparatus has a distinct basic structure and function. The essence of what happens is inevitable, not accidental. Thus the emergence of life is assumed to be described by a distinct theory. Today's great challenge is experimentally investigating chemical systems with the goal of creating artificial chemical life and the given theory provides a powerful stimulus. Life, from the perspective of physics, is the living state of matter and this view calls for a theory describing the fundamental requirements for the appearance of such a living state of matter (on the early earth and in the universe). The approach given here is an attempt in this direction. According to that approach the appearance of an entity with Darwinian behavior is instantaneous and linked with the creation of matter that carries information. Thus, Information (measured in bits according to Shannon) takes a meaning with that instant, the appearance of the first entity that evolves by multiplication, variation, selection and keeps that meaning during the entire evolution of the living (Information carrying) state of matter. Another consequence of this initial event is a spontaneous symmetry breaking due to the equal probabilities that the oligomer starting the process is right handed or left handed.
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