The Origin of Life as a Self-operating System
In my personal research, I am exploring the origins of life from a systems engineering perspective.
Here, we’ll consider living organisms from an operational perspective. By working backward from this viewpoint, we aim to understand what might have transpired before the birth of living organisms.
Information systems, like computers, are useful when someone operates their functionalities. They recover after shutdowns and are updated when they become obsolete.
In contrast, living organisms appear to perform these tasks autonomously. With an emphasis on operation, we might call living organisms a self-operating system.
Types of Operations
The overall operation of a system is comprised of various individual operations combined.
When viewing information systems using computers from an operational perspective, we can broadly categorize operations into utilization, maintenance, and production. Within each of these categories, there are various types of operations. It’s important to note that we are envisioning a system that includes not just software but also hardware, encompassing aspects like replacement and manufacturing.
Utilization operations include collection, selection, and consumption. These are primarily executed by system users.
Maintenance operations include repair, restoration, replacement, updates, and upgrades. They are mainly executed by system maintenance operators.
Production operations encompass planning, design, testing, and manufacturing. These are typically carried out by system or product development and manufacturing specialists.
When viewing living organisms as a self-operating system, they autonomously perform the operations of users, maintenance operators, and development and manufacturing specialists.
Operation Triggers
Every operation has a trigger to initiate it, and it’s carried out according to the timing of that trigger.
There are two main types of triggers:
Routine (Continuous/Cyclical/Planned/Sequential)
Routines initiate operations based on time, plans, or accumulated operation requests.
For instance, our daily activities like waking up, grooming, and eating breakfast are recurring operations triggered by time. Operations that happen with short cycles, like breathing or heartbeat, can be termed continuous operations. Depending on how one perceives the duration of a system’s time, short-cycle actions might also be called continuous. Some continuous operations, like the mechanism to maintain body temperature, function by constantly checking their status.
Other mechanisms that cause growth or aging in the body can be viewed as operations executed according to a pre-set plan. Also, processes like digestion of food accumulated in the stomach or filtration of waste stored in the body can be seen as sequential operations.
Event Response (Stimulus/Message/State Change)
While routines are operations initiated by inherent triggers, event responses are operations that start in reaction to external factors.
Operations can be triggered by external stimuli or received messages, or by observing external changes and reacting to them.
For example, if something you touch suddenly becomes hot, you’ll reflexively let go. Hearing a predator’s call might make you tense up. These are operations based on external stimuli or messages. Being on the lookout and then hiding at the sight of a moving shadow is an example of an operation triggered by a change in state.
Not Integration but Differentiation, Not Emergence but Refinement
When considering the origin of life, I believe that life was formed with a different concept than the conventional system development approach by humans.
When humans develop a system, they usually design the entire system, create its parts, and assemble those parts to complete a system that works as designed. In other words, it’s a concept of parts and their integrations.
However, as mentioned earlier, we do not understand how to disassemble living cells and then reassemble them. I don’t believe this is because we lack knowledge, but rather I think life wasn’t constructed in that manner in the first place.
I think that organisms don’t start moving once their parts are assembled, but rather living entities differentiate and become separate parts. This is my perspective.
For instance, when starting an entirely new business, initially, one person handles all operations of the business. As it gains traction, more hands are needed, leading to hiring. At this point, teaching all operations to new members is inefficient. Hence, operations are divided among members. This differentiation allows the business to grow.
When looking at the operations of a mature business, it appears that several specialized individuals or departments collaborate, giving an impression of an organically functioning business. This might seem like a function emerging collectively, something that cannot be achieved by individual departmental functions.
However, if the business was initially started by one person, the operations carried out by them are fundamental. Therefore, instead of seeing it as parts forming a system and leading to an emergent phenomenon, it might be more appropriate to see it as operations that started with one person being differentiated and refined over time.
I believe that it might be more appropriate to think that the mechanism of organisms as self-operating systems has taken an approach of differentiation and refinement rather than integration and emergence.
From Dependency to Independence
Even if a business is started by one person, for it to operate successfully, support from others is needed. Without customers who benefit from and return value to the business, it won’t sustain. One cannot establish a business on a deserted island.
The same can be said about the origin of life. Even if we assume life started as an undifferentiated and unrefined entity capable of all operations, it wouldn’t function well if it merely existed in isolation within the cosmos.
Initially, many people would help, and there would be early-adopter type customers who are supportive and actively use the rudimentary business. With some luck, the business should start to thrive.
Likewise, for the origin of life, there must have been an environment that greatly supported the emergence of life — a kind of natural operation. Relying on this environment, the beginnings of life got on track, grew, and eventually became independent. Through differentiation and refinement, they might have evolved into the cellular structures we know.
And that environment which played a crucial role in aiding the emergence of life could very well have been the ancient Earth.
Trigger for Operation
The Earth’s environment provides various triggers for chemical reactions. If Earth was a calm planet, there might not have been many triggers for periodic chemical reactions. However, fortunately, Earth is dynamic.
With abundant fluids like water and air, convection currents would have arisen in various places due to temperature changes from the sun and geothermal heat. This could have served as a routine trigger for chemical reactions.
Moreover, Earth experiences major environmental changes every day: day and night. The gravitational pull of the moon affects the tides, changing the coastal environments. The weather on Earth is unpredictable, and over a longer period, there are also changes in seasons. These changes could have easily triggered chemical reactions, acting as triggers for event-response operations.
These natural triggers might have been used in the origin of life. If life evolved while utilizing these triggers and gradually became independent from its environment, it wouldn’t be surprising that the first cells could survive and multiply under the dynamic conditions of Earth.
On the contrary, if life originating from a completely different environment came to Earth, one would wonder how it adapted to Earth’s dynamic changes from the start. This is also a reason why I am skeptical about the theory that fully-formed life came from outer space.
Chemical Experiment Development Operation Environment
In the absence of human intervention, we cannot assume the existence of an entity that could design chemical compounds that make up living organisms and determine whether they function as operations in the ancient Earth environment. Therefore, if life originated, it must have happened as a result of countless random events in the natural environment.
Therefore, within these random phenomena, chemical compounds beneficial to future life had to form. Not only did these chemicals need to persist, but they also had to be produced in large quantities. Beneficial compounds formed by mere chance that degrade over time would be meaningless for the origin of life. Hence, a mass production system is essential.
For countless random phenomena to occur, it’s not sufficient for the amount or ratio of chemical compounds in the environment to be homogeneous. Fortunately, Earth has land in moderate proportions with undulations and complex terrains. This results in numerous puddles, ponds, and lakes. These are places where chemical compounds accumulate, and they are environments rich in diversity where various compounds can coexist.
When conducting chemical experiments blindly, it’s best to have as many beakers or test tubes as possible. While I can’t provide concrete numbers, it’s reasonable to estimate that there were at least a million such water bodies on Earth.
In this vast and diverse chemical experimental development operation environment, water containing chemicals is stirred and mixed repeatedly. This is due to rivers flowing. Chemicals formed in upstream water bodies flow downstream. Moreover, chemicals can ascend with evaporating water, reaching the clouds. From there, they’re carried by wind and fall with the rain into upstream puddles and ponds. Thus, utilizing Earth’s large-scale water cycle, chemicals traverse countless beakers and test tubes.
Additionally, due to repeated changes in environmental conditions like temperature and sunlight exposure, state changes also occur. These, too, could serve as catalysts for the formation of new chemical compounds.
Test Criteria
Here, a test operation is performed on the generated chemical substance.
We don’t know which chemical substances contribute to the origin of life, and even if we did, there’s no intelligent entity like humans to set testing criteria arbitrarily. Thus, the test operations concerning the origin of life require mechanisms and criteria that don’t assume intelligence.
The criterion is to enhance the regeneration probability of the generated chemical substance. In other words, it’s a self-feedback loop for the production probability of a chemical.
Suppose there’s a chemical substance that is produced at a 0.000001% probability daily. Most chemicals will not increase or decrease their generation probability upon their formation. Hence, the probability remains at 0.000001% over time.
However, among those with a 0.000001% generation chance, if there’s one that increases its own production probability by 0.000001%, then after its formation, its probability becomes 0.000002%. If it’s produced again before being destroyed, the probability becomes 0.000003%. Thus, its generation rate increases, leading to an increased production quantity.
The criteria for enhancing its own regeneration does not concern the means or process. For instance, there may be substances that immediately alter their environment to increase regeneration. Others might have a cyclical structure where chemical A promotes the formation of chemical B, which in turn promotes chemical C, which further promotes chemical A.
This cyclic structure is a crucial feature seen in biological chemical pathways. Water circulates in the form of rivers, evaporation, clouds, and rain, and this cycle can possibly facilitate chain chemical reactions across various water bodies.
Production Operation
Chemicals selected by natural test operations will be produced in large quantities. These chemicals, carried by water circulation, will spread to other puddles and ponds. Meeting other chemicals in these environments or forming various chemical concentration ratios can catalyze the formation of new chemicals.
From this perspective, ancient Earth environments were unsegregated realms of chemical R&D, testing, and manufacturing. These production operations continued using Earth’s natural terrains and mechanisms.
Many diverse chemicals that can increase their own generation probabilities would have been abundantly produced on Earth, continuously diversifying.
This system also encompasses mechanisms for chemical exchange, updates, and upgrades, and could be considered a maintenance operation. Additionally, the production of these chemicals involves collecting, selecting, and consuming materials, so it can also be seen as a utilization operation.
These operations are undifferentiated and left to natural processes and coincidences. Still, they encompass all operations in a self-operational system and can be realized by combining routine or event-response operations.
From this perspective, all types of operations may have existed in the ancient Earth environment from the beginning.
Independence from Earth’s Operations
Within Earth’s operations, even if chemical evolution simply progressed, it remains a natural phenomenon. However, beyond mere chemical evolution, a stage of information storage and control emerged — the introduction of the central dogma where DNA leads to RNA, which then produces proteins.
DNA not only has a self-replicating function but also a recording function for various protein productions and a decision-making function for proteins produced under specific conditions. Considering the mechanism of the production operation where chemicals that enhance their own regeneration probability get mass-produced, the central dogma mechanism by DNA would have accelerated this effect.
I believe that this central dogma mechanism might have formed on ancient Earth even before the appearance of cell membranes. This is because DNA can operate without being encased in a membrane. I imagine DNA acting within water bodies like cells, replicating itself, recording protein blueprints, and issuing protein production commands.
Eventually, including the DNA and the central dogma mechanism, precursor structures to cellular scaffolds may have solidified them into a bare-cell-like form floating in water bodies or traveling through water cycles. These conglomerates of chemicals could possibly take over some of the operations previously dependent on Earth.
This might have led to the birth of the first cells when these structures eventually got encased in cell membranes. I believe that during this transition, many operations previously natural to Earth started being executed by chain chemical reactions directed by DNA.
Thus, cells, as self-operating systems, became independent of Earth’s operations.
In Conclusion: Life as a Mirror Image Operation
We are accustomed to stories of technology and science where new things are discovered or invented, leading to changes in our lives and society. Because of this, we tend to think that the origin of life involved a series of innovative events, culminating in the emergence of life.
Certainly, this narrative can explain the formation of complex chemicals that make up an organism’s body. However, it complicates the explanation of the operation of the system. It leaves unanswered the question of how newly discovered chemicals were integrated into the operations of a living cell.
If the operations of these chemicals were dependent on the Earth’s environment, and over time these chemical operations evolved, leading to differentiation and sophistication, culminating in the appearance of the cell membrane granting them independence, then there’s no need to explain how they were assembled. From the beginning, all operations coexisted in one environment, Earth.
And then, the natural operations of the Earth’s environment began to be mimicked by chemicals, which were later clearly separated by a cell membrane. This means that the operations of the Earth’s environment were encapsulated inside the cell membrane, like a world in a mirror. This is how I perceive the nature of life.
