Recreate life to understand how life began

Mark Williams sent a link to a very interesting article in New Scientists. It tells about success in attempts to recreate life in laboratory. Not from existing building blocks but at much more fundamental level. RNA is believed to play a fundamental role in the prebiotic evolution of RNA (so called RNA world scenario) and much of the effort has gone on attempts to induce the generation of RNA molecules in laboratory. The problem is that it is difficult to get long enough RNA molecules which would replicate. The newest experimental work however supports the idea that life emerges as a co-evolution of both RNA and of protocell membranes formed by phospholipids (fatty acids). Soap films represent a familiar example of this kind membrane.

The challenge is to get cell membranes to grow and replicate in laboratory.

1. Phospholipid layers are generated via self-organization and their development does not require any genetic apparatus. Therefore it is not too difficult to make protocell membranes to grow.

2. The first discovery was that RNA within cell membranes drives the vesicle growth. The presence of RNA makes the membrane able to steal lipids from neighbors: market economy is after all not so new discovery and means actually return to the protocell level in evolution! Congratulations, Dear Human Kind!

3. Division was the tough problem since it is not energetically favored. The solution to the problem came as an accidental discovery. It was found that the cells grew large enough they tend to become elongated and tubules began to grow from the surface of cell. Eventually the membrane becomes so elongated and filamentous that it becomes unstable against division. Clearly a critical state in which it does not cost much to build new cell membrane is in question. Maybe the generation of axons and microtubules is analogous process and also the formation of cilia at the surfaces of real cells.

These findings are very interesting from TGD point of view. DNA as topological quantum computer model (see this and this and also other chapters of the book Genes and Memes) assumes that the magnetic flux tubes connecting DNA and lipids of lipid layer and their braiding make possible a realization of topological quantum computer programs and memory based on braiding. A good metaphor is dancers in dancing hall with threads connecting their feet to the wall. The dancing pattern defines a braiding in time direction coding for topological quantum computation and the entanglement of threads codes this program to memory. The braiding can be also interpreted as a representation for the fluid flow of the lipid molecules which form a liquid crystal and induced by the flow of surrounding cellular water. In case of axons this could give rise to a memory about nerve pulse patterns involving directly the relationship between DNA and cell membrane defined by the braiding.

The flux tubes containing large hbar matter would be actually everywhere in living matter. The phase transitions reducing or increasing Planck constant would induce phase transitions taking molecules near to each other and vice versa and would explain the magic ability of bio-molecules to find each other. Bio-catalysis and DNA replication and also the phase transitions involving typically large changes in the density of cytoplasm would involve change of hbar. Same applies to sol-gel transitions and the transformation of biomatter between resting state to active state involving protein folding and un-folding. The reconnection of the flux tubes of the Indra's net formed by the magnetic flux tubes would be second non-chemical key process of biology.

In this framework it would not be too surprising that the evolution of RNA and cell membranes would take place in co-operation. Formation of membranes would make possible topological quantum computation and memory and intelligence at cell level, and this in turn would make for protocell to evolve further. Also the growth of tubules could be assigned with the generation of magnetic flux tubes above critical size. DNA is stable inside cell since cellular water can be in ordered phase in which the decay of DNA polymer by hydration does not take place. Therefore this evolution would precede the emergence of DNA in TGD Universe.