Conclusions

Abstract

The development of the chemiosmotic hypothesis in biochemistry can provide insight into the evolution of cooperation. Because chemiosmosis is a risky fraught process when end-product inhibition occurs, consuming, storing, or simply getting rid of the products of chemiosmosis must occur. Thus, in many cases in modern biology, and at crucial junctures in the history of life, cells and organisms may have simply dispersed valuable chemiosmotic products into the environment. These products constitute usable substrate, and such substrate is the currency of evolutionary fitness. This “free lunch that you are forced to make” has led to groups in which other cells and organisms have taken advantage of this chemiosmotic largesse. Since the time of Darwin, groups have been viewed as the key to cooperation. This perspective was reinforced with the rigorous development of the concepts of kin selection, reciprocal altruism, and group selection. Metabolism may lead to groups, groups may lead to cooperation, and cooperation may lead to complexity. Why have better mechanisms to regulate chemiosmosis not evolved? While some regulation certainly occurs, splitting hydrogen atoms into protons and electrons remains a fraught endeavor. Further, this may be looking at the problem backward. It may be precisely because chemiosmosis has produced so many successful collaborations in the history of life that a less well-regulated process has been favored and mechanisms of tight regulation have ultimately been selected against.

Most biology departments include a group of faculty who study ecology, evolution and behavior as a single integrated subject, often labeled by an acronym such as EEB, and a group of faculty who study cell, biochemical, and molecular biology, often labeled by an acronym such as CBMB. Communication between these two groups is famously limited and occasionally even hostile.

David Sloan Wilson et al. [1]