Complex life forms may arise from electrical processes
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RESEARCH
Complex lifeResearch forms may arise from electrical processes Edward C Elson
* Correspondence: [email protected] 1
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA
Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
Abstract There is still not an appealing and testable model to explain how single-celled organisms, usually following fusion of male and female gametes, proceed to grow and evolve into multi-cellular, complexly differentiated systems, a particular species following virtually an invariant and unique growth pattern. An intrinsic electrical oscillator, resembling the cardiac pacemaker, may explain the process. Highly auto-correlated, it could live independently of ordinary thermodynamic processes which mandate increasing disorder, and could coordinate growth and differentiation of organ anlage.
Introduction Biology and the second law of thermodynamics
Goldbeter [1] has classified some of the main biological cycles (rhythms) in order of increasing period. Only one, that of the cardiac rhythm, can be regarded as truly governed by a pacemaker in the deterministic sense. The others have large numbers of sub-systems interacting via laws of probability, and although exhibiting "tight" control in some sense, do not possess the high auto-correlation of the cardiac pace-maker, which this paper suggests may be an adaptation of the first pace-maker in evolution, the one facilitating cell specialization (differentiation) as well as proliferation. The proposal of this paper is that the fundamental cycle supplies the coordination and disciplining of the growth process which the myriads of stochastic biochemical cycles cannot. The fundamental cycle can be thought of deterministic and therefore may explain how development occurs, even though biological organisms remain subject to the second law of thermodynamics. In what sense does growth and differentiation of a biological organism violate the second law? This is perhaps intuitively apparent, but one should try to make the concept more concrete. It is known that in an isolated box filled with Avogadro's number of gas molecules at equilibrium, the probability that all of the molecules will go in the same direction simultaneously (will "fall up") is very low, even unlikely to happen during the presumed age of the universe. If one places a permeable membrane across the middle of the box, the probability that all molecules will be found in one compartment of the box at a later time is also very low. Likewise, the probability that a lowly protist, say, a bacterium assembles itself from complete, nutrient medium is similarly low. It is known that, over millennia, such a process has occurred, but this article inquires no further about that process, as it pertains to the origin of life, a large and even now incompletely understood process, beyond the scope chosen © 2010 Elson; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the t
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