Study on attractors during organism evolution

Abstract

The important question that arises during determining the evolution of organisms is whether evolution should be treated as a continuous process or whether groups of organisms fall into 'local' attractors during evolution. A similar question arises during considering the development of cells after cancer transformation. Answers to these questions can provide a better understanding of how normal and transformed organisms evolve. So far, no satisfactory answers have been found to these questions. To find the answers and demonstrate that organisms during evolution get trapped in 'local' attractors, an artificial neural network supported by a semihomologous approach and unified cell bioenergetics concept have been used in this work. A new universal model of cancer transformation and cancer development has been established and presented to highlight the differences between the development of transformed cells and normal organisms. An unequivocal explanation of cancer initialization and development has not been discovered so far, thus the proposed model should shed new light on the evolution of transformed cells.

Genome Attractors as Places of Evolution and Oases of Life

“…The occurrence of long stasis states may be the reason why some researchers are of the opinion that so far, modern science has not provided a satisfactory empirical explanation for the increasing complexity of living organisms throughout evolution [7]. It appears that the evolution of organisms occurs mostly as microevolution in separated genome attractors (i.e., organism-kind genome attractors) that ensure stable evolutionary changes of organisms [8]. The term 'attractor' means a system configuration toward which the system strives over time.…”

“…Macroevolution can be caused by the occurrence of the genome instability, resulting in the organisms leaving current genome attractors and attaining new genome attractors. Stable evolution in genome attractors (as long periods of microevolution) and a change of genome attractors (as relatively short periods of macroevolution) may indicate the discontinuous nature of the evolution process [8]. Genome attractors, due to allowing the stable evolution of organisms, can be termed 'oases of life'.…”

“…This article can be considered as a continuation of previously published articles in which unified cell bioenergetics (UCB) and new attempts to establish methods that can be used to examine the evolution of organisms (including the evolution of transformed cells) have been presented [8,[11][12][13][14][15]. These new methods include the use of artificial neural network (ANN) and a semihomologous approach to recognize evolution.…”

“…These new methods include the use of artificial neural network (ANN) and a semihomologous approach to recognize evolution. In the previously published articles, the neural network has been trained using cytochrome b sequences that have been used as phylogenetic probes that represent whole organisms [8,11]. It has been presented that the taught neural network is able to recognize the evolution of unknown (i.e., unseen before) organisms.…”

“…Viewed in this light, a moderate ROS level can stimulate organism evolution without a change of genome attractors, but bioenergetic problems (which lead to, among others, a higher level of mtNADH and an increase in LPR) can cause the occurrence of specific diseases (including cancer) and also can lead to changes of genome attractors as a result of high ROS formation rate [8,19]. From this point of view, ROS can act as a factor stimulating organism evolution also by random genetic mutations.…”