Abstract
Distinguishing things from beings, or matters from lives, is a fundamental question. Extending E. Schrödinger’s neg-entropy and I. Prigogine’s dissipative structure, we propose a chemical kinetic view that the earliest “live” process is embedded essentially in a special interaction between a pair of specific components under a particular, corresponding environmental conditions. The interaction exists as an inter-molecular-force-bond complex (IMFBC) that couples two separate chemical processes: one is the spontaneous formation of the IMFBC driven by a decrease of Gibbs free energy as a dissipative process; while the other is the disassembly of the IMFBC driven thermodynamically by free energy input from the environment. The two chemical processes coupled by the IMFBC originated independently and were considered non-living on Earth, but the IMFBC coupling of the two can be considered as the earliest form of metabolism: the first landmark on the path from things to a being. The dynamic formation and disassembly of the IMFBC, as a composite individual, follows a principle designated as “… structure for energy for structure for energy…”, the cycle continues; and for short it will be referred to as “structure for energy cycle”. With additional features derived from this starting point, the IMFBC-centered “live” process spontaneously evolved into more complex living organisms with the characteristics currently known.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Professor Ping Chen of Fudan University for his encouragement to put an earlier idea into writing; Professors Xiaodong Su, Yiqin Gao, Zhirong Liu, and Xinsheng Zhao of Peking University for their inspiring discussions on various related issues. We also thank Garland Allen (Washington Univ. St. Louis), Robert H. Austin (Princeton), Yong Chen (ENS Paris), Hao Li (UCSF), Qi Ouyang (PKU), D. Eric Smith (SFI), Yuhai Tu (IBM), Rutger A. van Santen (TU Eindhoven), Xiang Yu (Inst. Neurosci., CAS), and Cai Zhang (Inst. Biophys., CAS) for reading the manuscript and helpful comments. This work was supported by MST (2003CB715906 to Shunong Bai) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (11021463 to Qi Ouyang).
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Bai, S., Ge, H. & Qian, H. Structure for energy cycle: a unique status of the second law of thermodynamics for living systems. Sci. China Life Sci. 61, 1266–1273 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11427-018-9362-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11427-018-9362-y