Managed Chemistry

There are many riddles to unravel in studying the origins of life. One recent major change in the literature is the use of the plural ‘origins’ rather than the singular ‘origin’. Several years ago, a major journal in the field changed the first word in its name by pluralizing the singular. It is now Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere, to account for multiple origin hypotheses.

One long-standing argument that divided the field for a time was whether genes came first or metabolism came first. Over the last decade there has been a détente in the two camps realizing that they both genetics and metabolism likely co-evolved, however the details are still poorly understood. The latest foray into bridging the camps is an article in Foundations of Science by John Stewart titled “The Origins of Life: The Managed-Metabolism Hypothesis”.

The crux of the argument is that a proto-metabolism by itself is highly unlikely to evolve into a more complex life-like system because of a ‘cooperative barrier’. Two key contributions to this barrier are (1) the inability to support ‘beneficial cooperators’ (molecules that catalyze the formation of other molecules within the autocatalytic proto-metabolism) that themselves are not produced within the system, and (2) ‘free rider’ molecules that reduce the concentrations of molecules participating in the metabolism, which essentially behave as parasites.

How could one imagine taking the next leap of complexity? Stewart’s answer is that the evolution of ‘managed chemistry’ is required. In particular, he argues that a separate digital-encoded system, that is to a large extent independent of the proto-metabolism but benefits from it and can direct resources, would be able to drive a phase-change so-to-speak of non-life to life-like. How exactly this works isn’t clear. It is a hypothesis paper after all. From my reading (and I might not have fully understood the details), it attempts to graft the RNA World approach on to an early proto-metabolism that then allows for co-evolution. The theory takes inspiration from organizational features of living systems including societies and corporations. I previously theorized tongue-in-cheek about the role of managers as reducers of thermodynamic complexity. Stewart hints at this line of thought – ‘chemical system managers’ allows for more efficient energy dissipation thus driving the co-evolution of the system.

The article attempts to posit analogies between chemical managers and corporate (presumably human) managers in society. For example, one might consider government as an organizing system that evolved from a loose association of tribes and individuals who pool their resources to increase their energy efficiency. Specialization takes place and, before you know it, we’re no longer disparate small groups of hunter-gatherers but urban dwellers compressed into a small space – a buzzing hive of activity. If you were to estimate the energy use per capita in an urban area, the efficiency is likely higher than in the rural areas despite the idyllic picture of living-out-there in nature. Remember we’re talking about efficient energy use as a total sum and being able to direct ‘excess’ energy into other products and activities. Cities are good at that, despite their problems.

Stewart makes some suggestions of how his hypothesis can be tested, and how it differs from other seemingly related hypotheses that he thinks have their flaws. He’s not very specific about how one should go about this, so I’m not sure who might take this up. But it’s an interesting idea nevertheless. It has also made me think about management in a slightly different way. Now when I think about administrators and managers, I’m going to start imagine them as molecules in a system! Hmmm… I wonder what molecules will represent them. Might depend on their different personalities and idiosyncracies, and whether they are foxes or hedgehogs. I just talked about some properties of polar versus non-polar molecules today in my general chemistry course. Maybe some managers are like polar molecules and others are like non-polar molecules. Perhaps I’ll have strange dreams tonight about them.