Populations and Evolution (q-bio.PE)

Abstract: The origin of cellular life can be described in terms of the transition from inorganic matter: solids, liquids and gases, to the emergence of cooperative assemblies of organic matter, DNA and proteins,capable of replication and metabolism. Directionality Theory is a mathematical model of the collective behavior of populations of organic matter: cells and higher organisms. Evolutionary entropy, the cornerstone of the theory, is a statistical measure of the cooperativity of the interacting components that comprise the population. The main tenet of Directionality Theory is the Entropic Principle of Collective Behavior: The collective behavior of aggregates of organic matter is contingent on the population size and the external energy source, and characterized by extremal states of evolutionary entropy. This article invokes Directionality Theory to provide an evolutionary rationale for the following sequence of transformations which define the emergence of cellular life: 1. The self-assembly of activated macromolecules from inorganic matter 2. The emergence of an RNA world, defined by RNA molecules with catalytic and replicative properties 3. The origin of cellular life, the integration of the three carbon-based polymers: DNA, proteins and lipids, to generate a metabolic and replicative unit.