a class of lipids that are an integral component of all cell membranes. Although the elements of von Neumann's UC cannot be put in a one-to-one correspondence with a living organism, the UC does provide a key insight into the nature of life, by directing attention to the logical structure of information processing and control, and information flow in living systems. The algorithmic information of a system or structure is defined to be the Shannon information contained in the shortest algorithm that can specify the system or structure as its output [63–65]. pure FA membranes.

[76] have recently proposed, via a toy model, one possible candidate measure for transitions in causal structure in biological hierarchies, using transfer entropy to study the flow of information from local to global and from global to local scales in a lattice of coupled logistic maps. As we have presented it here, the key distinction between the origin of life and other ‘emergent’ transitions is the onset of distributed information control, enabling context-dependent causation, where an abstract and non-physical systemic entity (algorithmic information) effectively becomes a causal agent capable of manipulating its material substrate [23,24]. The aforementioned simple model, while instructive, suffers from the fact that it cannot capture how algorithmic information alters the update rules, and thus the future state of the system.
Mineral surface chemistry and nanoparticle-aggregation control membrane self-assembly. Purchase access to all full-text HTML articles for 6 or 36 hr at a low cost. Evolutionary transitions and top-down causation, An Information integration theory of consciousness, Detecting emergent processes in cellular automata with excess information, The calculi of emergence: computation, dynamics and induction, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, doi:10.1146/annurev-conmatphys-062910-140509, A framework for parsing heritable information, Evolutionary aspects of reservoir computing, Probing complexity: thermodynamics and computational mechanics approaches to origins studies, Primordial sex facilitates the emergence of evolution, Systems protobiology: origin of life in lipid catalytic networks, Information theory, predictability and the emergence of complex life, Coarse-graining as a downward causation mechanism, How causal analysis can reveal autonomy in models of biological systems, analogue and digital information processing, dual hardware and software roles of genetic material, physical separation of instructions (algorithms) from the mechanism that implements them. Copying of mixed-sequence RNA templates inside model protocells.

Mineral-induced formation of reactive oxygen species. 3 The question of whether a causal chain expressed in informational language at the system level can ultimately be reduced, at least in principle, to a mechanistic causal chain at the molecular level, is the subject of a longstanding debate, complicated by the fact that biological systems are always open. 9 ‘Bilingual’ here means tRNA molecules that recognize both the four-letter alphabet of nucleic acids and the 20-letter alphabet of amino acids. He asserts that life orig-inated on the surface of iron sulfides as a result of such chemistry. the origin of life on other solid worlds.

Steep pH gradients and directed colloid transport in a microfluidic alkaline hydrothermal pore. Simple peptides derived from the ribosomal core potentiate RNA polymerase ribozyme function. Redefining the problem: an algorithmic origin for life. However, this is the one place in biology where we know universality (at least in a limited sense) has taken hold. Digitization may have been a natural outcome of this process in reaction networks that had once been primarily analogue. For example, the functionality of expressed RNA and protein sequences is clearly context-dependent—only an exceedingly small subset of these molecules is causally efficacious (i.e. The particular dynamical system investigated was designed to parallel a hallmark of many major evolutionary transitions—the emergence of higher-level reproducers from previously autonomous lower-level units [77]. Argarwal VK, Schutte W, Greenberg JM etal. A perspective on the role of minerals in prebiotic synthesis. In this manner, the organization of a von Neumann automaton ensures that instructions remain logically differentiated from their physical representation. This is not without good reason: the origin of translation—mediating what is known of the transition from trivial to non-trivial8—is notoriously difficult to pin down, amounting to an algorithmic takeover of information stored in one molecular species (nucleic acids) that becomes operable over another structurally and chemically very different species (peptides). We consider this separation to be one of the hallmarks of life.

Of the many open questions surrounding how life emerges from non-life, perhaps the most challenging is the vast gulf between complex chemistry and the simplest biology: even the smallest mycoplasma is immeasurably more complex than any chemical reaction network we might engineer in the laboratory with current technology. Explaining the chemical substrate of life and claiming it as a solution to life's origin is like pointing to silicon and copper as an explanation for the goings-on inside a computer. The assump-tions that complex metabolic cycles self-organize on the surface and that the significant products never escape from the surface are essential parts of this theory; in Wächtershäuser’s opinion, there never was a prebiotic soup! Although trivial self-replicators can undergo Darwinian evolution [66,67], the lack of separation between algorithm and implementation implies that monomolecular systems are divided from known life by a logical and organizational chasm that cannot be crossed by mere complexification of passive hardware. across its membrane. By continuing you agree to the use of cookies. We thank Andrew Briggs, Luis Cisneros, John Doyle and George Ellis for stimulating conversations as well as the manuscript's anonymous reviewers for constructive comments. catalyzed protometabolic pathways, leading to protocell self-assembly. Salk Institute for Biological Studies, 10010 N. Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla, CA 92037, USA.

7 The all-important dual role cited earlier is clearly implemented: DNA polymerases are oblivious to the instructions that DNA contains and will blindly copy both coding and non-coding sequences. The 5 Major Biochemical Steps in the Evolution of Life 3. Typically, they are characterized by building blocks which are not much simpler than the assembled object. Anaerobic photosynthesis –bacteria H 2 S + CO 2 sugar + water + sulphur uses sunlight for energy 4. Does quantum mechanics play a non-trivial role in life? Presidential address to the Mineralogical Society of America, Salt Lake City, October 18, 2005: mineral surfaces and the prebiotic selection and organization of biomolecules. By continuing you agree to the use of cookies.

By continuing you agree to the, https://doi.org/10.1016/S0968-0004(98)01300-0, The origin of life—a review of facts and speculations.

The two components are connected by a glycerol molecule.

Rather, DNA is a (mostly) passive repository for transcription of stored data into RNA, some (but by no means all) of which goes on to be translated into proteins. Such universality would be exceedingly difficult to engineer in an analogue-only system given the challenges associated with building reaction networks where each (programmed) reaction is chemically orthogonal to all other reactions. PL molecules are arranged as a bilayer in water with the head groups facing towards water and tails away from the water.

Examination of organic compounds from insoluble organic matter isolated from some Antarctic carbonaceous chondrites by heating experiments.
8191–1857 University of Arizona Press, Gesteland, R. F. and Atkins, J. F. (1993) The RNA World: The Nature of Modern RNA Suggests a Prebiotic World, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, Cairns-Smith, A. G. (1982) Genetic Takeover and the Mineral Origins of Life, Cambridge University Press, Cairns-Smith, A. G. and Davis, C. J. By the above considerations, it seems that digital or analogue alone is insufficient to provide a satisfactory account of the origin of life—not just on technical grounds, but for deep conceptual reasons. He approached the problem by asking whether it was possible to build a machine that could construct any physical system, including itself.

Stability of model membranes in extreme environments. In genetics-first origin of life scenarios, it has therefore been suggested that early life may have undergone a ‘hardware upgrade’ (or a succession of upgrades), eventually transitioning from a proto-RNA genetic polymer (or even an inorganic substrate [39,40]) into RNA-based biochemistry at a later stage in its evolutionary history. In analogue chemical systems, information is contained in a continuously variable composition of an assembly of molecules rather than in a discrete string of digital bits. By continuing you agree to the, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tibs.2018.11.009, Mineral–Lipid Interactions in the Origins of Life. It is the functionality of the expressed RNAs and proteins—not the bits—that is biologically important. © 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. As such, the onset of Darwinian evolution in a chemical system was probably not the critical step in the emergence of life. As remarked above, the proteome, and in fact nearly all biochemical interactions in the cell, processes information in an analogue format, i.e. The chicken-or-egg problem, as traditionally posed, thus amounts to a debate of whether analogue or digital hardware came first. ‘Metabolism-first’ scenarios for the origin of life fall within this analogue framework, positing that early life was based on autocatalytic metabolic cycles that would have been constructed in a manner akin to how analogue computer systems are cabled together to execute a specific problem-solving task [43,44].

Formation and stability of prebiotically relevant vesicular systems in terrestrial geothermal environments.

It then follows from simple statistics that there will have been a large ensemble of systems proceeding down the pathway toward life, and no obvious reason why only one member successfully completed the journey.

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