The origin and early evolution of life in chemical complexity space

TL;DR

This paper presents a dynamical systems framework for understanding the origin and early evolution of life, emphasizing chemical complexity, metastable states, and the role of diffusion at interfaces, offering new insights and testable hypotheses.

Contribution

It introduces a novel theoretical model linking chemical complexity, diffusion, and attractor states to explain life's emergence and early evolution, with implications for empirical research.

Findings

First life states likely arose at diffusion interfaces with low keystone species diffusion.

Mutations on mineral surfaces can lead to competing derived life states.

Higher complexity life states tend to dominate mineral surfaces over time.

Abstract

Life can be viewed as a localized chemical system that sits on, or in the basin of attraction of, a metastable dynamical attractor state that remains out of equilibrium with the environment. Such a view of life allows that new living states can arise through chance changes in local chemical concentration (=mutations) that move points in space into the basin of attraction of a life state - the attractor being an autocatalytic sets whose essential (=keystone) species are produced at a higher rate than they are lost to the environment by diffusion, such that growth in expected. This conception of life yields several new insights and conjectures. (1) This framework suggests that the first new life states to arise are likely at interfaces where the rate of diffusion of keystone species is tied to a low-diffusion regime, while precursors and waste products diffuse at a higher rate. (2) There are reasons to expect that once the first life state arises, most likely on a mineral surface, additional mutations will generate derived life states with which the original state will compete. (3) I propose that in the resulting adaptive process there is a general tendency for higher complexity life states (i.e., ones that are further from being at equilibrium with the environment) to dominate a given mineral surface. (4) The framework suggests a simple and predictable path by which cells evolve and provides pointers on why such cells are likely to acquire particulate inheritance. Overall, the dynamical systems theoretical framework developed provides an integrated view of the origin and early evolution of life and supports novel empirical approaches.