How Does Biology Emerge From Chemistry?
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How Does Biology Emerge From Chemistry? Addy Pross
Received: 15 June 2012 / Accepted: 26 July 2012 / Published online: 6 November 2012 # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2012
Keywords Abiogenesis . Dynamic kinetic stability . Origin of life . Biological evolution . Systems chemistry It is remarkable that despite some 60 years of successive landmark discoveries in molecular biology, the connection between the two sciences of chemistry and biology continues to remain uncertain. Indeed, Carl Woese (2004), one of the leading molecular biologists of the 20th century has recently claimed that biology as a subject has lost its way, that it awaits its revolution, just like the revolution that overtook physics in the early part of the 20th century. Simply put, we continue to lack a general theory of life (Cleland and Chyba 2002), and it is the lack of such a theory that impedes the natural merging of the biological and physical sciences, one that would place the biological sciences within a more general physicochemical framework. That difficulty leads us directly to the problem of abiogenesis, the process by which life on earth is thought to have emerged. What is the relationship, if one at all exists, between the chemical process of abiogenesis and the biological process of evolution? How did chemistry become biology? Recent developments in the relatively new area of chemistry, systems chemistry (von Kiedrowski et al. 2011; Ludlow and Otto 2008; Dadon et al. 2008) have been showing that the reactivity patterns of simple replicating systems may assist in the building of conceptual bridges between the physicochemical (inanimate) and biological (animate) worlds (Pross 2011, 2009; Pascal 2012). A key element in that effort has been the ability to specify and characterize a new kind of stability– dynamic kinetic stability (DKS), one that pertains to replicating systems, whether chemical or biological (Pross 2011, 2005). In the ‘regular’ chemical world, stability is normally associated with lack of reactivity. However, in the world of persistent replicating systems, the stability of the system comes about because of its reactivity. The system is stable in the sense of being persistent, by its being able to Dedicated to the memory of Emmanuel (Manny)Tannenbaum, whose scientific insights we so valued, and whose friendship we will miss A. Pross (*) Department of Chemistry, Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva 84105, Israel e-mail: [email protected]
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maintain a continuing presence through on-going replication. Of course, in order to be able to continue to replicate and maintain a presence, the system must be unstable in a thermodynamic sense. From that perspective it can be seen that a biological system which is characterized as ‘fit’, can be thought of as stable, but its stability is of that ‘other kind’, rather than exemplifying the more familiar thermodynamic kind. This way of thinking then enables established biological terms, such as ‘fitness’ and ‘maximizing fitness’ to be equated with their ch
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