The history of life on Earth is often likened to the flame of a four-billion-year-old relay. One torch, lit at the beginning of the chain, continues through life in the same form all the way. But what if life were better understood by analogy with the eye, a closely related organ that arose from independent origins? What if life evolved not just once, but evolved several times independently?
In a new paper published in Journal of Molecular Evolution, researchers at the Santa Fe Institute Chris Kempes and David Krakauer argue that in order to study various forms of life, we must develop a new theoretical framework.
Within their three-layer framework, Kempes and Krakouer invite researchers to first think about the matter-filled space in which life might occur; second, the constraints that limit the existence of possible life; And third, improvement processes that encourage adaptation. In general, the framework regards life as adaptive information and adopts computational analogies to capture the central processes of life.
What if life were better understood by analogy with the eye, a convergent organ that evolved from independent origins?
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Many important possibilities arise when we view life in a new light. First, life appears time and time again—some real adaptations are actually “new forms of life, not just adaptations,” explains Krakouer—and they take much broader forms than conventional definitions allow.
Culture, arithmetic and forest are all forms of life within this framework. As Kemps explains, “Human culture lives on the substance of the brain, just as multicellular organisms live on the substance of single-celled organisms.”
When researchers focus on the life traits of individual organisms, they often ignore the extent to which living organisms depend on whole ecosystems as their main ingredient, and also ignore the ways in which living systems may more or less. Within the Kempes-Krakauer framework, on the other hand, another implication emerges: life becomes a continuum rather than a binary phenomenon. In this context, the authors point to recent attempts to quantitatively place life on a spectrum.
By looking more broadly at the principles of life, Kempes and Krakauer hope to produce more fertile theories for studying life. With clearer principles for discovering life forms, and a new set of potential life forms emerging from the new principles, we will not only clarify what life is, Krakauer explains, but we will also be better equipped “to build tools for discovering life.” life, to recreate it in the laboratory, and to learn about life.” The extent to which you live the life we see.
Reference: “The Multiple Paths of Multiple Life” by Christopher B. Kemps and David C. Krakauer, 12 July 2021, Available here. Journal of Molecular Evolution.
DOI: 10.1007 / s00239-021-10016-2
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