Physical Mechanisms Influencing Life Origin and Development. Physical–Biochemical Paradigm of Life

Abstract

The present view of biological phenomena is based on a biochemical paradigm that the development of living organisms is defined by information stored in a molecular form as some genetic code. However, new facts and discoveries indicate that biological phenomena cannot be confined to a biochemical realm alone, but are also influenced by physical mechanisms. One such discovered mechanism works at cellular, organ and whole organism spatial levels. It imposes uniquely defined constraints on the distribution of nutrients between biomass synthesis and maintenance of existing biomass. The relative (to the total consumed nutrients) amount of produced biomass, which decreases during the growth, accordingly changes the composition of biochemical reactions and secures their irreversibility during the organismal life cycle. Mathematically, this growth mechanism is represented by a growth equation. Using this equation, we introduce growth models for unicellular organisms Amoeba, Schizosaccharomyces pombe, Escherichia coli, Bacillus subtilis, Staphylococcus, show their adequacy to experimental data, and present two types of possible division mechanisms. Also, on the basis of the growth equation, we find different metabolic characteristics of these organisms. For instance, it was shown that in logarithmic coordinates the values of their metabolic allometric exponents are located on a straight line. This fact has important implications with regard to evolutionary process of organisms within a food chain, considered as a single system. High adequateness of obtained results to experimental data, from different perspectives, as well as excellent compliance with previously proven more particular knowledge, and with general criteria for validation of scientific truths, proves the validity of the introduced growth equation and of the discovered growth mechanism (which has all indications to be a real physical mechanism presenting in Nature). Taken together, the obtained results set solid grounds for the introduction of a more comprehensive physical–biochemical paradigm of Life origin, development and evolution.