http://people.csail.mit.edu/jaffer/GTOL/membrane | |
Membranes and Cell Division |
But as the Nucleotide Game played and evolved, the need for introducing membranes never arose. It appears that membranes are not necessary for the emergence of life, defined here as the appearance of Universal Constructors, self replicating machines with the computational power of a Turing machine.
This does not mean that membranes might not be necessary for more advanced life forms; just that membranes are unnecessary for evolution to the point of translation of genetic information into non-genetic molecules.
In hindsight, this should have been obvious because ribosomes can operate in the absence of membranes, while most other cellular processes and organelles are critically dependent upon them. This leads to the question:
As the Nucleotide Game evolves, it may well select for piercing molecules to be attached to the chromosome or its capsid. Viruses must also be able to escape their enclosures. Because capsids will evolve even in the absence of membranes, it is reasonable to expect that viruses which reside in vacuoles will escape as part of their life cycles. Thus viruses can involve membranes before the evolution of the complicated process of cell fission.
Game theory can shed light on RNA versus DNA in early organisms. Mutation is a crucial component of these games. It is the means by which alternative strategies are tested. With viral replication producing dozens of copies each generation, and needing only a few of those to be faithful replicas, viruses can tolerate high rates of mutation. As the chapter on Bacterial Evolution discusses, higher mutation rates lead to faster evolution. Thus organisms using RNA, which is less stable than DNA in cytoplasm, will be naturally selected.
The next chapter is
The Evolution of Proteins
Copyright © 2005 Aubrey Jaffer
I am a guest and not a member of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
My actions and comments do not reflect in any way on MIT. | ||
The Game Theory of Life | ||
agj @ alum.mit.edu | Go Figure! |