ON THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF LIFE ON PLANET EARTH

AN UPDATE

Dov Henis, Ph.D.
henisdov@netvision.net.il
Telephone and fax 972 9 748 6187
P.O. Box 1052 45110
Hod-Hasharon
Israel

Posted on Heraclitean Biology Group web site November 24, 1999
Copyright 1999 by Dov Henis

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First draft July 5 1997. Additions/modifications March-November 1999.

All suggestions of the origin and nature of life on Earth may only be conjectural, until proven. The various versions may appeal or entertain or offend, depending on the educational background of the reader. You may find this version fraught with insights, with answers to yet unanswered questions and with directions for future studies and work IF, if like the boy in The Emperor's New Clothes, you call what you see; if you call cellular life INTELLIGENT rather than A Homeostatic System. If you find this version even remotely plausible I hope you feel personally challenged and eager to contribute ideas to an outline of an experimental program to scientifically assess the basic conjecture presented here.

1. Each and every living cell on Earth is inhabited by live beings. Some of the cells cluster to live in the form of polycell life forms.

2. Life on Earth started soon after its surface formed. It either started on Earth or arrived here, in the forms of beings either pre-celled or celled, or evolved here into celled forms. If it arrived here or formed here pre-celled it probably happened in a primordial soup. Happened means the first time that one or several peptide(s) in the soup duplicated. The force/drive for the formation of peptide(s) was probably energetic, in a direction of lower energy content in the formed peptide compared with the energy content of the factors involved in its formation. Early identical peptide(s) formed probably independently in identical environments and conditions. The first time a peptide served as a template for formation of its duplicate was the first appearance of a gene. And this occurrence, at which the association of all the factors involved in the formation of the duplicate were drawn to stay in a stable association, this was the first occurrence of Life, as Life and Gene are two sides of a coin. Eventually the various associations of life-factors+specific-peptides enclose/cell themselves, with changing environments, with a membrane. In a following phase of an "evolution/improved-energetic-efficiency" peptides form into RNA and DNA and further "celling", a nucleus, evolves within some cells to protect/improve efficiency of the "template/cell-beehive-queen". By now the cytoplasm is also being continuously "modified/improved" by/for the cell's inhabitants.

3. Since their initial colonization of Earth the in-cell beings have been evolving and forming the multitudes of cluster-of-cells, polycell life forms inhabiting Earth today.

4. The basic nature of life is common to cells that exist singly, to mercells ( constituent cells of polycells ) and to polycell life forms regardless of overall size and degree of complexity. The answer to " what makes a polycell life-form a LIFE " is the answer to " what makes some molecular associations in cells LIVE BEINGS ", and vice versa.

5. The base forms of these Earth's in-cell four-billion-years-old beings are polynucleotides (PNs) of a modular construction. These are active purposeful beings, parallel to our conception of "intelligent purposeful beings", i.e. assess occurrences and react to them . They are of an Earth civilization 10 to100 times older than ours by OUR definition of time, the civilization of the formers of all life forms on Earth including human's.

6. Earth is the universe of PNs. The base space and time units of their universe, their parallels of our millimeter and second, are probably about 10 to the minus 14th of ours. A lapse of our one second is for them equivalent to a lapse of one year to us ( 3.15 X 10 to the 7 seconds ).

7. In each single cell or a mercell of a polycell there is, in human terms, an organized purposeful hierarchical chain of monitoring, assessment, and task/work organisation for both in- and out-of-cell tasks. We do not yet know enough to understand and define the hierarchy. It is plausible that this may be first comprehended in stem cells of polycells. The purposeful PNs continuously evolve and make more efficient the configurations of themselves and of their "functional tools", to improve the capability of their own survival, procreation and propagation. There are at least as many varieties of PNs as there are forms of life on Earth, many more than polycell life forms, as we are still familiar with but very few of the single-cell life forms on Earth. The "intelligence" of the "intelligent PNs" is composed, like ours and like that of other polycell systems, of compounded process/materials involving interaction of several chemicals and relays of energy pulses. In all cases this compounded array is "impressed" by a phenomenon, passes the impression to "someonething" , followed by "purposeful" instruction(s) of the someonething what and how to carry out.

8. Cells are, by our present terms, the space-ships of the PNs that inhabit them with their essential accessories. The clusters-of-cells, the many Earth's polycell life forms, are the PNs' space stations. Types of cells, nucleated and non-nucleated, exist in a great variety of compositions, each developed and maintained by colonies of a specific PN type, with functional organization comprising central awareness of surroundings, their assessment, and reactions to them with a variety of specialized task-dedicated "tools/specific-forms-of-beings". Many of the space-ships-cells are self-sufficient in suitable environs while others are jointly or symbiotically cooperative with and interdependent on their kin or other space-ships-cells. Most space-ships-cells comprise their energy, chemical and other plants and their scouts and communication and defense and repair crews etc.,. The interdependent types not only congregate in space-stations-polycell- life forms but also evolve, form and maintain the environs enveloping the space-ships that make up the space-station. Some of the space-ships-cells depend for survival and propagation on attacking and exploiting or devouring other cells or their environs.

9. Earth's polycell life forms are the PNs' space stations that, in our terms, were formed and programmed by their base PNs to reflect-react to materials and circumstances and phenomena and to continuous self-programmed-improving for continuous preservation and procreation of the space-stations, for the continuous preservation and procreation of the base PNs that reside in the mercells of the polycell life form.

10. The human terms and connotations used here re the PNs are, of course, of a human civilization. The PNs and their predecessors have come into being and developed their capabilities when our universe was younger, of smaller volume, of a higher energy density and of a lesser and different material content than at present. The essence of their biological drive and goal is neatly and solely to survive and proliferate. This drive and goal are thus the base essence of all Earth's life forms. It is instilled in each and every life form on Earth as these are simply the mono- or polycell colonies of the PNs. When the survival or proliferation of cells is endangered this information reaches the in-cell "top hierarchy" and it institutes process(es) of mutation(s), based on their billions-of-years (in our terms) experience that some mutated version(s) may survive the endangering changes. The PNs technical capabilities are, for THEIR needs and purpose, much superior to ours for our present needs and purposes, as evident in the various forms of their energy exploitation and chemical transformations and assembly and construction processes.

11. The biological drive of single and of mercells is neatly to survive and proliferate. Base existence, survival, procreation and propagation are the essence, target and and sole activities of the PNs, instilled also in their polycell life forms. We are not yet capable of discerning if they have developed also "cultural traits/entities", i.e. activities of secondary contribution to capability of survival and proliferation. It is plausible, though, that by their experience of billions of years a "secondary" trait is, for their needs and purpose, inefficient in terms of their essential drive and thus superflous.

12. All individual and group behavioral aspects of each and all Earth's life forms, of all the PNs space-stations, derive from their PNs biological drive and are shaped and directed by it or somehow serve it. These aspects include all civilizations including human's and all the forms of "culture", which in the case of humans are subjective virtual entities evolved, developed and of meaning and relevance to humans only.

13. The biological drive of PN is most probably similar to a "direction of chemical reaction", directed or drawn by energy balance. The prompter and initiator and mover of life is ENERGY. Life is in essence mechanism(s) prompted and initiated by energy, to draw energy from the universal pool of energy ( in a sense the weight of the universe ), to store it in various forms and to utilize it in several ways for repeating this process over and over.

14. The dimensions, configurations and compositions of the PNs and of their various task-dedicated crews and of their environs raise wonders such as the relationships between the PNs and surrounding molecules and ions considering their relative sizes and the forces acting on and between them. Also whereas Earth is the PNs' universe their this universe may be a level up above another, quantum universe.

15. Human's uniqueness on Earth was initiated by a stimulus in a zone in the brain of some of them when faced by arising needs for new manipulations and for new analyses and assessments of wider vistas open to them when changing posture to erect on two feet. The new demands employed existing brain cells in one half of the brain, overtaxed their capabilities and led to compensation by overworking symmetrically located cells in the second half of the split brain and this in turn led again to compensation in the first half and thus contralaterallization evolved and is still evolving now.

16. Present knowledge does not enable discerning the characteristics that render a specific polynucleotide entity in a mono- or mercell a "primary" or more of a "being" than other functional entities evolved by them and functioning for them. It may turn out that most of the task-dedicated functional entities are "live extensions, or beings" evolved and "programmed" by the cell's "primary beings".

17. This conjectural picture raises also reflections about the simplistic notions we humans have re communication with "aliens". Human communications are based on some human senses whereas PNs' communications are based on "chemilanguage", on use of chemicals. Would we ever be able to "communicate" even with our own PN ? Would we ever be able to do more than only learn and discern their constitution and the manifestations of their activities and exploit these findings for our purposes ? Is not communication with our own PN an on-hand available target and challenge and opportunity to develop communications with "aliens" ? And is our capability to conceive of "aliens" suffice for arriving at such a communication or must both "parties" be capable of "conceiving" to enable communication ? and is "conceiving" a unique virtual human aspect ?

18. Humans have just evolved into the universe. We are not yet able to understand and explain the origin and nature of life on Earth in acceptable human scientific terms. If this universe is finite humans may eventually arrive at a Final Theory that will include understanding of life. Eventually. Until then we can only progress towards further understanding. Meanwhile a plausible version may hopefully place us at a new crossroad closer to a better insight. We do not yet know if the Earthly PNs are the only compositions/configurations organized into life in the universe. It seems, though, that the origin and drive of life is energy and as material is a form of energy then life is a manifestation or revelation of energy. This opens the awful question " what is energy ", reminding us that as far back and as deep down we learn to observe and as much as we think we comprehend , the Unknown is still there infinitely ahead of us.