Origin of life on earth and Shannon's theory of communication

doi:10.1016/S0097-8485(00)80010-8

Computers & Chemistry

Volume 24, Issue 1, January 2000, Pages 105-123

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0097-8485(00)80010-8 Get rights and content

Abstract

The genetic information system is segregated, linear and digital. It is astonishing that the technology of information theory and coding theory has been in place in biology for at least 3.850 billion years (Mojzsis, S.J., Kishnamurthy, Arrhenius, G., 1998. Before RNA and after: geological and geochemical constraints on molecular evolution 1–47. In: Gesteland, R.F. (Ed.), The RNA World: The Nature of Modern RNA Suggests a Prebiotic RNA, second ed. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, Boca Raton, FL). The genetic code performs a mapping between the sequences of the four nucleotides in mRNA to the sequences of the 20 amino acids in protein. It is highly relevant to the origin of life that the genetic code is constructed to confront and solve the problems of communication and recording by the same principles found both in the genetic information system and in modern computer and communication codes. There is nothing in the physico-chemical world that remotely resembles reactions being determined by a sequence and codes between sequences. The existence of a genome and the genetic code divides living organisms from non-living matter. If the historic process of the origin and evolution of life could be followed, it would prove to be a purely chemical process (Wächtershäuser, G., 1997. The origin of life and its methodological challenge. J. Theor. Biol. 187, 483–694). The question is whether this historic process or any reasonable part of it is available to human experiment and reasoning; there is no requirement that Nature's laws be plausible or even known to mankind. Bohr (Bohr, N., 1933. Light and life. Nature 308, 421–423, 456–459) argued that life is consistent with but undecidable by human reasoning from physics and chemistry. Perhaps scientists will come closer and closer to the riddle of how life emerged on Earth, but, like Zeno's Achilles, never achieve a complete solution.

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Origin of life on earth and Shannon's theory of communication

Abstract

Nature

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA

Science

Gapped BLAST and PSI-BLAST: a new generation of protein database searc programs

Nucleic Acid Res.

ber Nitrat-und Nitritassimilation

Z. Angew. Chem.

Light and life

Nature

Light and life

Nature

Wall-less prokyrotes of plants

Annu. Rev. Phytopathol.

Ann

Math. Stat.

A model for the RNA-catalyzed replication of RNA

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA

An APL2 gallery of mathematical physics — a course outline

Codes without commas

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA

The origin of the genetic code

J. Mol. Biol.

Central Dogma of Molecular Biology

Nature

The first living systems: a bioenergic perspective

Microbiol. Mol. Biol. Rev.

Matchings and phylogenetic trees

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA

Self-organization of matter and the evolution of biological macromolecules

Naturwissenschaften

The hypercycle: a principle of natural self-organization. Part A: emergence of the hypercycle

Naturwissenschaften

The nucleotide sequences of a viral DNA

Sci. Am.

Experimantal retracement of the origins of a protocell: it was also a protoneuron

J. Biol. Phys.

Limit, logic and computation

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA

Accuracy of protein biosynthesis: quasi-species nature of protein and possibility of error catastrophes

J. Theor. Biol.

Nature

The exon theory of genes

Cold Spring Harbor Symp.

Quant. Biol.

Origin of genes

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA

Entstehung der ersten Organismen

In vitro synthesis of glutothione peroxidase from selenite translational incorporation of selenocysteine

Biochem. Biophys. Acta

Measuring genome evolution

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA

The origin of species

North Br. Rev.