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Origins of Life

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Semiotic Agency

Part of the book series: Biosemiotics ((BSEM,volume 25))

Abstract

The origin of life involves a transition from a merely physical world into the world of semiotic agency . Attempts to explain the origin of life by synthesis of such organic molecules as peptides or nucleic acids is baseless, because amino acids and nucleotides are products of the evolving life rather than parts from which the first living system was assembled. We follow the footsteps of Oparin and Dyson in reconstructing primordial self-propagating functional molecular networks. Such networks were initially non-genetic and presumably similar to “lipid world” vesicles. Components of these networks were simple catalysts resembling contemporary coenzymes which might have colonized the surface of small oil droplets in water, where oil (mostly alkanes) was both a substrate and nutrient. Coenzyme-like molecules (CLMs) changed the surface properties of oil droplets, and in this way created favorable conditions for their own self-reproduction. Heredity was supported by a transfer of CLMs to daughter oil droplets following an accidental split of parental droplets. Niche-dependent self-reproduction and natural selection were necessary conditions for the emergence of cooperation between different kinds of CLMs that inhabited the same oil droplet. Eventually, some CLMs formed polymers and their adaptive evolution resulted in the emergence of template-based synthesis similar to that of nucleic acids. Oil droplets eventually transformed into the outer membrane of cells via engulfing water, stabilization of the surface, and osmoregulation. As a result, the metabolism was internalized, allowing cells to accumulate free-floating resources, which was a necessary condition for the emergence of protein synthesis. This scenario covers a long evolutionary path from simple but already functional and evolvable molecules to cellular organisms comparable to the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA ).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Initially it was called ‘autocell’ ( Deacon, 2006).

  2. 2.

    P-GARD model does not differentiate between the surface and inner space in the vesicle. The kinetics of chemical reactions depends on dimensionality, and thus it is different on the surface and inside a vesicle. Thus, the coenzyme-world model requires a different mathematical formalism than P-GARD, but it has not been developed yet.

  3. 3.

    Cited from https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/education/events/deamer1.html

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ste 100, National Inst on Aging, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Alexei Sharov

  2. Department of Social Studies, University of Stavanger, Stavanger, Norway

    Morten Tønnessen

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Sharov, A., Tønnessen, M. (2021). Origins of Life. In: Semiotic Agency. Biosemiotics, vol 25. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-89484-9_5

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