The Origin of a Trans-Generational Organization in the Phenomenon of Biogenesis

Abstract

One of the central issues of the whole process of biogenesis is how to understand the progressive constitution of a large (in spatial and temporal terms) system that transcends the individual sphere of proto-metabolic organizations and includes collective networks, both synchronous (i.e., proto-ecosystem webs) and asynchronous (i.e., trans-generational protocell populations). This paper analyzes the appearance of a minimal form of reproduction in the process of biogenesis from an organizational perspective. This perspective highlights the problem of how a process transcending the actual organization of the reproducing entities (i.e., protocells) could have a causal power. It is proposed that this problem may be explained if we consider that reproduction generates a kind of feedback between the actual concatenation of the processes of each reproducing cycle and the type continuity that a reliable iteration of these cycles creates. Thus, reproduction generates a new form of self-maintaining system linking “organismal” and “evolutionary” domains, since the consequence of the iteration of self-reproducing cycles is the long-term continuity of a specific type of SM compartmentalized organization, and the functional role of a particular self-reproducing organization (token) lies in its capacity to trigger a diachronic succession of similar self-reproducing organizations, i.e., a lineage.

The Construction of Biological ‘Inter-Identity’ as the Outcome of a Complex Process of Protocell Development in Prebiotic Evolution

“…The more reliable token reproduction becomes, the larger, deeper and more manifest the type will turn out to be, and the more deeply interbred the two (type and token) will get. Now, let us analyze this more carefully (for a similar, complementary view, see Moreno, 2019). A first observation is that the production of these genealogical types is based on the organizational dynamics of individuated tokens, which must recursively grow, reshape their boundary, duplicate their key components and distribute them in such a way that, when fission occurs, two (or more) similar tokens are actually produced.…”

“…so that the cycle ends up in the physical multiplication and subsequent propagation of the original organization). In other words, the appearance of protocells capable of self-reproduction, in a minimal but biologically significant sense, required protocells that had already achieved not only a certain degree of functional diversity in their organization, but also the integration of all the aforementioned processes, with mechanisms to orchestrate and modulate the necessary changes in the compartment, together with changes in the internal reaction network, in response to environmental fluctuations or stimuli (Moreno, 2019).…”