The Emergence and Evolution of Life in a “Fatty Acid World” Based on Quantum Mechanics

Abstract

Quantum mechanical based electron correlation interactions among molecules are the source of the weak hydrogen and Van der Waals bonds that are critical to the self-assembly of artificial fatty acid micelles. Life on Earth or elsewhere could have emerged in the form of self-reproducing photoactive fatty acid micelles, which gradually evolved into nucleotide-containing micelles due to the enhanced ability of nucleotide-coupled sensitizer molecules to absorb visible light. Comparison of the calculated absorption spectra of micelles with and without nucleotides confirmed this idea and supports the idea of the emergence and evolution of nucleotides in minimal cells of a so-called Fatty Acid World. Furthermore, the nucleotide-caused wavelength shift and broadening of the absorption pattern potentially gives these molecules an additional valuable role, other than a purely genetic one in the early stages of the development of life. From the information theory point of view, the nucleotide sequences in such micelles carry positional information providing better electron transport along the nucleotide-sensitizer chain and, in addition, providing complimentary copies of that information for the next generation. Nucleotide sequences, which in the first period of evolution of fatty acid molecules were useful just for better absorbance of the light in the longer wavelength region, later in the PNA or RNA World, took on the role of genetic information storage.

Quantum processes in 8-Oxo-Guanine-Ru(bipyridine)32+ photosynthetic systems of artificial minimal cells

“…This behavior again matches what is experimentally seen for such interactions [2,3], namely a shifting of the lowest energy Vis spectrum excited states of complex quantum systems, due to covalent and Van der Waals bonding interactions with the additional molecules. This is also consistent with our general finding that the inclusion of more molecules in the photosynthetic systems of artificial minimal cells resulted in longer wavelengths for the absorption spectrum [5][6][7][8]. The shift of the absorption spectrum to the red for the artificial protocell photosynthetic centers might be considered as the measure of the complexity of these systems.…”

“…This implies that the covalent bonding of the 8-oxo-guanine to the PNA fragment to one of the bipyridines breaks the D 3 symmetry and splits the degenerate lines at 455.2 nm, 450.7 nm, 441.6 nm, and 429.7 nm (see Table 2). Despite the greater complexity of the larger covalently bonded 8-oxo-guanine-PNA-Ru(bpy) 2+ 3 supermolecule compared with that of the Ru(bpy) 2+ 3 molecule alone, the peaks of the spectrum of the more complex molecule did not show a clear shift to the red as had been previously seen for the softly "bonded" supramolecule based on the 1,4-bis(N,Ndimethylamino) naphthalene sensitizer molecule to which the other molecules are loosely attached by hydrogen bonds and Van der Waals forces [6][7][8]13]. …”

“…Due to its small size, all its processes, including its self-assembly from component molecules, its absorption of light, and its metabolism, should in principle be investigated using quantum (wave) theory [4][5][6][7][8]. The entire minimal cell might be considered to be a molecular electronics device that self-assembles according to quantum-based electron interaction potentials and that absorbs light and carries on its metabolism according to quantum electron excitation and tunnelling equations.…”

The Hormesis of Thinking: A Deeper Quantum Thermodynamic Perspective?

“…For example, Erwin Schrödinger in his 1944 book "What is life" predicted some of the basic characteristics of DNA before it had been discovered [14]. More recently, it has been suggested that quantum effects would have been selected for at the beginnings of life due to their ability to improve efficiency -in particular, quantum tunnelling and superposition [29,30]. Indeed, the concept of directed "quantum evolution" has been proposed, which could explain how the first "self-replicator" molecules arose using basic quantum principles and gets around the problem of how, given the enormous degrees of freedom even a relatively short 15-20 unit peptide or nucleic acid displays, could have arisen [31].…”

Possible Physical Determination of the Mass, Size, Doubling Time and Density of the Unicellular Organisms Based on the Fundamental Physical Constants

“…There are many hypotheses for the origin of bacteria-ranging from astrophysical bases of Universe (Ehrenfreund et al, 2002) and self-reproducing coacervates (Oparin, 1973;Colgate et al, 2003;Vasas et al, 2012) to the first mitotic cells (Sagan, 1967;Ratcliff et al, 2012;Montagnes et al, 2012). Recently, the quantummechanical effects (Patte, 1967;Pati, 2004;Davies, 2008;Tamulis and Grigalavicus, 2010;Fleming et al, 2011) and the anthropic principles that implies that Universe must be consistent with the existence of life (Carr and Rees, 1979;Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, 1999;Vidal, 2010;Kamenshchik and Teryaev, 2013) need to be extended into the understanding of life. In the present approach we developed the hypothesis for possible physical determination of the mass, size, doubling time and density parameters of the unicellular organisms on the Earth.…”