Physical mechanisms influencing life origin and development. Physical-biochemical paradigm of Life

TL;DR

This paper proposes a physical-biochemical paradigm of life, emphasizing physical mechanisms' influence on biological development, supported by growth models and experimental data across various unicellular organisms.

Contribution

It introduces a new growth equation model that integrates physical constraints, providing insights into organism development, metabolism, and evolution beyond traditional biochemical paradigms.

Findings

Validated growth models against experimental data

Identified two division mechanisms in unicellular organisms

Discovered linear relationships in metabolic exponents

Abstract

The present view of biological phenomena is based on a biochemical paradigm that development of living organisms is defined by information stored in a molecular form as some genetic code. However, new discoveries indicate that biological phenomena cannot be confined to a biochemical realm alone, but are also influenced by physical mechanisms. These mechanisms work at cellular, organ and whole organism spatial levels. They impose uniquely defined constraints on distribution of nutrients between biomass synthesis and maintenance of existing biomass, thus influencing the composition of biochemical reactions, their successive change and irreversibility during the organismal life cycle. Mathematically, such a growth mechanism is represented by a growth equation. Using this equation, we introduce growth models, show their adequacy to experimental data, and discover two types of division mechanisms, examining growth of unicellular organisms Amoeba, S. pombe, E. coli, B. subtilis, Staphylococcus. Also, on the basis of the growth equation, we find different metabolic characteristics of these organisms. For instance, it was shown that in logarithmic coordinates the values of their metabolic allometric exponents are located on a straight line. This fact has important implications with regard to evolutionary process of organisms within a food chain, considered as a single system. High adequateness of obtained results to experimental data, from different perspectives, as well as excellent compliance with previously proven more particular knowledge, and with general criteria for validation of scientific truths, proves validity of the introduced general growth mechanism and the growth equation. Taken together, the obtained results set solid grounds for introduction of a more comprehensive physical-biochemical paradigm of Life origin, development and evolution.