TOWARDS THE ORIGIN OF DARWINIAN NATURAL SELECTION
Koichiro Matsuno
Nagaoka University of Technology
Nagaoka 940-2188, Japan
CXQ02365@nifty.com(Received October 27, 2010; Accepted November 1, 2010)(Abstract)
Unless the stipulation of the detailed balanceis forcibly imposed on a theoretical ground ofwhatever type, chemical reactions proceeding
there could already be selective internally. Whatis in place instead is the detour balance that canallow the participation of intermediary reactionsin implementing the overall balancing in the
involved chemical reactions. The evolutionary
nature of chemical reactions in the absence of thedetailed balance rests upon the persistentimbalance, even though the slightest one, between
a direct pair of the forward and the backward
reactions. Some reaction products being set freefrom the stipulation of the detailed balance canexhibit the chemical affinities that were notactualized in the initial reactants. The lack of themutual consistency between the reactants andtheir chemical affinities makes the reactions
internally selective and evolutionary, and could
have implemented a selective process even prior
to the onset of Darwinian natural selection. One
likely candidate for constantly breaking themutual consistency between the reactants andtheir chemical affinities on the primitive Earthcould have been those chemical reactions riding
on hydrothermal circulation of seawater aroundthe hot vents in the ocean.

biology ... suggest that he needed to have his
consciousness raised by some good exposure to
the world of natural selection. At an intellectuallevel, I suppose he understood natural selection.
But perhaps you need to be steeped in natural
selection, immersed in it, swim about in it, before
you can truly appreciate its power." [2].
A key agenda at this point is how we canconceive of natural selection when we refer to it.
If one picks up a fossil record over the geologicaltime span, no doubt we could see there an
occurrence of natural selection in the products as
Dawkins emphasized. Evolutionary products arecertainly selective. However, if one focuses upon
what is occurring right in the process of natural
selection on the spot as Hoyle eloquently called
our attention to such a situation, it cannot be
subsumed under natural selection in the products.
Natural selection in the making is going to act
there. It is just more than what natural selection in
the products would imply since natural selectionin the making does not dismiss from the outset thecase such that the process itself, in addition to the
products, could be selective. We would need to be
steeped in natural selection in the making if it isrequired to respond to Hoyle’s concern more
seriously [3].
In particular, any biological organism is inprocessing an organized assembly of the geneproducts. Even the most primitive unicellularorganism called Methanococcus possesses about
1700 gene products of roughly 1.7 million
base-pairs length perhaps close to the minimum
necessary for supporting living organisms in an
independent manner [4]. At issue is a selective
nature latent in the organized assembly of thegene products. Both the genes and the geneproducts are the products of the assembly process.
Addressing the assembly products is certainly inaccord with differential reproduction of heritable
traits, rather than inheritance of acquired traits,
because of the built-in stipulation of the geneproducts following the gene instruction.
Nonetheless, the assembly process could maintainsome room of exercising a variable selectivity as
going through precipitating both the geneproducts and the genes themselves by means of a
DNA replication whose fidelity may not strictly
be 100% perfect.
A likelihood of selective capacity latent inassembly process is much broader than what
biology may imply, since an organization
processing material assembly is also conceivablein the realm of chemistry even without invoking
biological processes. A case in point is a set of(Keywords)
citric acid cycle; detour balance; equilibrium
constant; hydrothermal vents; metabolism;
meta-stable products; natural selection; rate
constant
1. Introduction
Significance of Darwinian natural selection
cannot be overemphasized from an evolutionary
perspective. One witness underpinning thesignificance is seen in the comment raised by
Richard Dawkins on the remark made by Fred
Hoyle as stating:“A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces ofa Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A
whirlwind happens to blow through the yard.
What is the chance that after its passage a fully
assembled 747, ready to fly, will be foundstanding there? So small as to be negligible, even
if a tornado were to blow through enoughjunkyards to fill the whole Universe.” [1].
In response, Dawkins made a comment:"Fred Hoyle was a brilliant physicist andcosmologist,
but
his
Boeing747
misunderstanding, and other mistakes in

Viva Origino 39 (2011) 11 - 18
© 2011 by SSOEL Japan- 11 -

Viva Origino 39 (2011) 11 - 18

chemical reactions involved in forming andtransforming the reaction products.

for detecting the molecular participants involvedin exercising mutual cohesions between them.
The appraisal of chemical affinities latent in
the actual requires the revisiting to chemical
reactions in thermal equilibrium. Once theequilibrium temperature is fixed, the decisive
factor for determining the ratio of the number
densities of the products to those of the reactantsin thermal equilibrium is the equilibrium constantwhich depends only upon the Gibbs free energies
of each of the participating reactants and the
products. One can find the Gibbs free energy ofeach molecule involved in the equilibrium
chemical reactions unambiguously. However, theprevalence of the equilibrium constants
determining the populations of the reacting
chemicals may be legitimate only when theequilibrium conditions are kept for the period
sufficiently longer than any of the duration timeover which the reactants are transformed into the
products. If the likelihood of the equilibrium
conditions over such a long period is disturbed forwhatever reasons, the decisive factor for
determining the chemical reactions proceeding
there would turn out to be the rate constant ofeach reaction.
The rate constant is significant in its capacityof referring directly to each individual reaction,
whereas the equilibrium constant is relevant only
to the population of the reactants in thermal
equilibrium. If the issue is about chemical
evolution, the role of the equilibrium constant,though which certainly remains legitimate inreaction kinetics in thermal equilibrium, cannot
meet the challenge towards addressing
evolutionary processes at large because of theimposed methodological stipulation being faithful
to the situation in stasis. Once the temperature
specifying the environmental conditions is varied
for whatever reasons, the role of the equilibrium
constant presiding over the reaction kinetics may
be marginalized. Instead, the rate constant of eachchemical reaction can now come to assume amajor role in addressing both evolutionarychanges and adaptations as individually
regulating the chemical affinities latent in theactual reactants available in the immediate
environment.

2. Detailed Balance and Beyond
Insofar as chemical reactions are conceivedof exclusively within the framework of thermal
equilibrium, every forward reaction comes to bebalanced with the accompanied backward
reaction. That is the principle of the detailedbalance. However, once the principle of thedetailed balance is faithfully followed, there
would be no likelihood of on-going chemical
evolution. The balancing between forming the
products and transforming the same products into
others leaves the resultant reactions in stasis in thesense that there would be no chance ofsynthesizing new products in the process.
When molecules A and B come to react andform a new molecule A-B by means of abond-making between the two, the chemicalaffinity of making an A-B is already latent in an
A in isolation and also in a B in isolation. If thereaction of making an A-B from an A and a B
satisfies the principle of the detailed balance, thesubsequent fate of the product A-B may be madeexplicit as referring to the further reactions
precipitating
theconsequential derivative
products. Although the reactions mediating
between the product A-B and the further
derivative products are already implicit in the
A-B, the chemical affinities latent there are madeexplicit as referring to the derivative products.
What is unique to chemical reactions proceedingunder the stipulation of the detailed balance is that
all of the relevant chemical affinities are madeactual in reference to the existing products. Of
course, although there could be a whole array ofchemical affinities that may not have a chance ofbeing actualized, those latent affinities would play
no significant role within the framework of thedetailed balance. The principle of the detailedbalance presiding over chemical reactions inthermal equilibrium sets a methodologicalstipulation of dismissing those chemical affinities
not yet actualized as being irrelevant and forcibly
depriving the reactions of their evolutionary
competency.
The contrast between the actual and thelatent chemical affinity is subtle. No one candismiss the latent chemical affinity in favor of theactual one unless the methodological stipulationof doing so is enforced. For instance, the quantum
chemist can correctly and legitimately evaluate
the chemical affinity acting between a carbon
atom and an oxygen molecule on a theoreticalground. The chemical affinity estimatedtheoretically is a latent one in the sense that it isrelevant only within the attempted theoreticalframework. Nonetheless, there is a definite
difference between chemical affinities latent in
the actual and those latent in theory alone. The
difference rests upon who or what is responsible

3. Rate Control and Detour Balance
The rate control of the reacting molecules inchemical evolution would become pronounced in
the process of the bond-making between theavailable small organic molecules and in its
consequential hydrolysis. Oligomers or polymers
to be synthesized in aqueous milieu are in theinterplay between the bond-making and thecountering hydrolysis.
When the temperature of the reaction
environment is high enough, the reactants canenhance the likelihood of forming a lot of bonds
between them as utilizing the heat energy- 12 -

Viva Origino 39 (2011) 11 - 18

available there. Then, if the reaction products are
suddenly transferred into the cold environment,
some of the reaction products can survive thelikely hydrolysis of dissociating them back into
the initial reactants and can remain as themeta-stable products. The precipitation of themeta-stable products is already selective in thatthose products that could not survive thehydrolysis were necessarily pruned off. This
pruning is undoubtedly rate-controlled in thesense that those products which were faster intheir hydrolysis as facing the transference fromthe hot to the cold environment could not survive
there. Once the meta-stable products emerge, thebalancing between each direct pair of thebond-making and the hydrolysis is not tenable.
What could be possible instead would be theactivity for net balancing between a whole set ofthe bond-making and the hydrolysis being
realizable on the level of the population of theparticipating reactants altogether. That is thedetour balance [5].
In addition, what is unique to the meta-stableproducts in their makeup is that they maintainsome remnants of the reactants incorporated in
the synthetic reactions that occurred in the hightemperature environment just before the products
were transferred into the cold environment. The
meta-stable products also viewed as the molecularimprints of the preceding synthetic reactions can
now extend their own chemical affinities towards
the immediate environment. Furthermore, if themeta-stable products can enter the hot
environments again as expected in the case ofhydrothermal circulation of seawater though hotvents, they can update their makeup in a synthetic
manner depending upon the nature of thechemical affinities latent in the precedingmeta-stable products and upon the newly
available
reactants
in
their
immediateneighborhood.
Chemical reactions riding on hydrothermal
circulation of seawater through hot vents can thus
provide and support those meta-stable productsthat could update their molecular makeup, though
only partially at a time, as repeating the shuttle
between the hot and the cold environments. The
update of the molecular makeup is nothing otherthan the molecular exchange being inevitable forsupporting the meta-stable products. This view
makes a sharp contrast to another view raised by
Erwin Schrödinger on the significance ofmolecular exchange or metabolism as a uniquely
biological characteristic as stated below:“How does the living organism avoid decay? The
obvious answer is: By eating, drinking, breathingand (in the case of plants) assimilating. The
technical term is metabolism. The Greek word(µεταβάλλειν) means change or exchange.
Exchange of what? Originally the underlying ideais, no doubt, exchange of material. (E.g. theGerman for metabolism is Stoffwechsel.) That theexchange of material should be the essential thing
is absurd. Any atom of nitrogen, oxygen, sulphur,etc., is as good as any other of its kind; what
could be gained by exchanging them? . . . Whatan organism feeds upon is negative entropy. Or,
to put it less paradoxically, the essential thing in
metabolism is that the organism succeeds infreeing itself from all the entropy it cannot help
producing while alive.” [6].
Although Schrödinger declares that theexchange of material should be the essential thing
is absurd and that the essential thing in
metabolism is that the organism succeeds infreeing itself from all the entropy it cannot help
producing while alive, this does not dismiss thecase that the exchange of material could be muchbroader than what metabolism in biology would
imply. Rather, once the exchange of material isguaranteed on the physical ground, biology cantake advantage of the physical likelihood of
metabolism that has already been available, assetting itself free from the additional burden of
inventing metabolism for the own sake of
biology.
Reaction kinetics undergoing frequenttransference of the reactants between the hot andthe cold environment such as the one riding onhydrothermal circulation seawater through hotvents can be both selective and metabolic. It isselective even prior to the onset of Darwinian
natural selection in pruning off those reaction
products that cannot survive hydrolysis when they
are suddenly transferred into the cold
environments. It is also metabolic even prior to
the emergence of the proto-cells in constantly
updating the material constituents of themeta-stable products which can survive thehydrolysis when they are transferred into the cold
environments as repeating the cycle of thetransference between the hot and the oldenvironments. What remains to be seen is theexperimental likelihood of processing themeta-stable products.
4. A Case Study; Experimental
When a flow reactor was is utilized for
examining the elongation of amino acid glycine
into its oligomers as circulating the reaction
solution between the hot (230oC) and the cold
(0oC) regions in a cyclic manner, we could
observe the exponential build-up of both
diglycine and triglycine initially, in which nometallic ions were added into the solution [7].
One possible interpretation of the results is thateven if tetraglycine was synthesized in the hot
region, it could not survive the hydrolysis when it
was suddenly transferred into the cold region withthe consequence of being disintegrated into, say,two units of diglycine. Net synthesis oftetraglycine was pruned off. One byproduct of thedisintegration into the two units of diglycine
could be an exponential growth of diglycine by- 13 -

Viva Origino 39 (2011) 11 - 18

repeating the similar visiting to the hot and thecold in a cyclic manner. Once the growth of
diglycine happens to be exponential, the similar
growth of triglycine would also be likely in viewof the fact that the synthesis of a triglycine is dueto the bond-making between the dimer and amonomeric glycine. Furthermore, when adiglycine molecule is focused upon, it can be seen
as a meta-stable product whose chemical affinity
is functional in pulling in the constituent
monomers
available
inthe
immediateneighborhood for further synthesis of a triglycine
or a tetraglycine only temporarily. Monomericglycine constituting diglycine and triglycine isconstantly exchanged with the new one of thesame type found in the neighborhood.
One more experimental test for examining
the occurrence of the material exchange inprebiotic evolution is a likelihood of running theoxidative citric acid cycle in the absence of
biological enzymes in the flow reactor (Figure 1).

reductive citric acid cycle [10], while that ofheterotrophs on the oxidative one. This contrast
between the reductive and the oxidative citric acidcycles, however, raises a serious question ofwhether the separation between the two could
have literally and faithfully been observed even in
the actual transition from prebiotic toprotobiological evolution [11]. The evolutionary
onset of the reductive citric acid cycle would face
the problem of how to manage an intricatearrangement of inorganic catalysts so as toprepare and process both the reactants andproducts at the right places just in time. In
contrast, the evolutionary onset of the oxidative
one would face the problem of how to synthesize
a sufficient amount of nutrients in the absence of
enzymes of biological origin.
We then tried to overcome some of the
difficulties with each of the reductive and theoxidative citric acid cycles for the sake of getting
the cycle started under prebiotic conditions as
putting each advantage together in a unifying
manner. An important mediator for the unificationmust be pyruvate. All of the member carboxylic
acid molecules constituting the citric acid cycle
are on the side of downhill in the thermodynamic
energy landscape when viewed from pyruvate[12]. If pyruvate synthesized elsewhere canreadily be recruited to the reaction site for its
oxidation, the likelihood for initiating theoxidative citric acid cycle may be in sight. In fact,
pyruvate can be synthesized from methane thiol
as a byproduct of carbonylation reactions at hightemperature and pressure sites such ashydrothermal vents in the ocean as using ironmonosulphide as a catalyst [13]. The
Fischer-Tropsch type reactions near hydrothermal
vents are another possibility of synthesizing
pyruvate from carbon sources such as formic andoxalic acids [14].
Furthermore, recycling the reaction solution
including pyruvate between the high-temperature,high-pressure sites and the cold surrounding water
may facilitate the synthesis of mono-, di- andtricarboxylic acids as getting the activation energy
from short visit to or near close encounter withthe hot sites and quenching the synthesized
products rapidly in the cold surroundings insomewhat orchestrated manner [15]. We sought
an experimental possibility of the conversion
among mono-, di-, and tricarboxylic acidmolecules for the onset of the oxidative citric acidcycle in the flow reactor simulating hydrothermal
circulation of seawater through the hot vents,
under the conditions that pyruvate may besupplied from somewhere else.
We used a flow reactor simulating ahydrothermal environment in the primitive ocean[16], and examined how the reaction solution
including pyruvate and the member carboxylic
acid molecules constituting the citric acid cycle,
namely, oxaloacetate, citrate, isocitrate, alphaFigure 1. A schematic diagram of the intended citricacid cycle that is oxidative except for the hypotheticalpathway from pyruvate to oxaloacetate due to apossible electrophilic addition of carbon dioxide.

The citric acid cycle as the innermost core
member of all extant metabolic cycles [8] runs
through either reducing or oxidizing carbon
compounds in the cycle. When the earliest
organisms were examined, they must have been
either autotrophs or heterotrophs. Earliest
autotrophs would require carbon to be reduced
from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere or in theenvironments to drive the synthesis of allintermediate metabolites [9], while earliest
heterotrophs
would
requirethehighconcentrations of nutrients such as pyruvate to beoxidized for the sake of extracting energy forrunning the outer synthetic pathways. This view
would suggest an occurrence of autotrophs on the- 14 -

Viva Origino 39 (2011) 11 - 18

raised from room temperature up to 120oC overthe first 60 minutes linearly and was maintained
at 120oC since then. We set the high temperaturechamber at 120oC instead of 180oC and the timeinterval required for linear temperature increase to
be 60 minutes instead of 30 minutes to suppress
the contribution of thermal decomposition of thereactants. The results of the experiment over the
first 180 minutes are displayed in Figure 2. We
independently identified the products with use ofboth an HPLC and a NMR. The results presented
in Figure 2 were reproducible in repeatedexperiments, especially with regard to the initialbuildup of citrate synthesis and the occurrence of
anomalous spikes in the concentrations ofisocitrate, alpha ketoglutarate, succinate andmalate.
Citrate as a key carboxylic acid molecule
constituting the cycle was observed to build up atleast initially, while its concentration finally
started to decrease because of the experimental
stipulation of supplying no additional pyruvate in
the process except for those prepared initially. In
order to confirm the reaction cycle in operationand the associated carbon throughflow running
round the cycle, we next ran the flow reactor withthe reaction solution with only the seven member
carboxylic acid molecules present with theconcentration of 1 mM for each molecular species
and with no added pyruvate. Figure 3 (left handside) demonstrates only a slight build-up of citrate,
but remained far less significant compared to thecase in the presence of added pyruvate. Pyruvate
was found indispensable for the proper operationof the reaction cycle in general and for the carbon
throughflow running round the cycle for thebuildup of citrate in particular.
Furthermore, we attempted to run the flow
reactor in which one of the seven member
carboxylic acid molecules was missing in theinitially prepared reaction solution. The missing
carboxylic acid molecule we focused upon wasalpha ketoglutarate, while the concentration of theother six member carboxylic acid molecules wasmaintained at 1 mM for each, along with 10 mM
pyruvate. The result was also appended in Figure
3 (left hand side). There was observed nosignificant build-up of citrate. This observation
serves as a testimony to the fact that the build-up
of citrate requires an uninterrupted and connectedreaction cycle supporting the circulating carbon
throughflow round the cycle, which certainly
functions as a means of the material exchange.
All of the seven-member carboxylic acids in thecycle are meta-stable in exchanging theirconstituent carbon atoms.
Occurrence of the throughflow running
round a reaction cycle is regulative in that any
incremental increase in the throughflow may
decrease the concentration of an arbitrary reactant
constituting the cycle when viewed from the
upstream towards the downstream, while it canketoglutarate, succinate, fumarate, and malate,could react among them through the operation of
the reactor. The reaction solution including
various carboxylic acids was injected at a flowrate of 10 mL/min from a 15 mL heated chamber
at 120o-180oC and at 15-24 MPa. The reactantspassed through a thin nozzle of diameter 0.8 mm
into a larger and cooler chamber at 0oC andapproximately the same pressure. Most of thereaction fluid stayed in the large vessels of about
580 mL altogether in stirring conditions at 0oC.
Cycle time of the total volume of fluid (600 mL)
was about 60 min, but with stirring the reactants
cycled roughly once per minute. The actual cycle
time of reactants under stirring conditions wasmeasured by running dye molecules (vitamin B12)
as a marker through the reactor. Each run lasted 3
hours and started from room temperature,requiring approximately 30-60 min for the hightemperature chamber to reach the designated120o-180oC. Sampling of the specimen was done
from the low temperature chamber every minute.
We then prepared the reaction solution of 1
mM for each of oxaloacetate, citrate, isocitrate,alpha ketoglutarate, succinate, fumarate, andmalate, and 10 mM pyruvate as the carbon source.
The present setup was based upon the hypothesisthat if a sufficient amount of activation energy isavailable in the flow reactor operation,
electrophilic addition of CO2 to three-carbon
pyruvate may lead to the synthesis of four-carbon
oxaloacetate and further addition of a two-carbon
acetyl group released from pyruvate tooxaloacetate may lead to the synthesis of
six-carbon citrate. Of course, experimental
confirmation of the synthesis of oxaloacetate frompyruvate and CO2 remains to be seen.
The source of CO2 may be endogenous if theoxidative citric acid cycle is really operative,
since two molecules of CO2 are released during
each turn of the cycle; one CO2 molecule from thereaction pathway from six-carbon isocitrate to
five-carbon alpha ketoglutarate and another one
from the pathway from alpha ketoglutarate tofour-carbon succinate. The whole reactions
around the cycle would be network catalytic [8,10] in the sense that the populations of
oxaloacetate and all the other cycle members
double with each turn of the cycle if theirinevitable degradations [17, 18] are not severely
counted.
A main objective of the present experiment
was to see whether there could be available anempirically approachable window in which all of
the major carboxylic acid molecules constituting
the citric acid cycle may increase their
populations in time. At the least, if the populationof every species of the member carboxylic acidmolecules is found positive, the supporting citricacid cycle may turn out to be likely. We then ran
the flow reactor under the conditions that thetemperature of the high temperature chamber was- 15 -

Viva Origino 39 (2011) 11 - 18

Figure 2. Time developments of the amount of each reactant and the pH value ofthe reaction solution through the flow-reactor operation, in which the reaction
solution was initially prepared at 1.0 mM for each of oxaloacetate, citrate,isocitrate, alpha ketoglutarate, succinate, fumarate and malate, and 10 mM for
pyruvate. The temperature of the high temperature chamber was raised fromroom temperature up to 120oC over the first 60 minutes linearly and wasmaintained at that temperature since then. The pH of the specimen was measured
at room temperature. The observed data included ±1% experimental errors for
repetitions for a single run of the experiment. Preliminary results over the first
120 minutes of the reactor operation were already reported in Matsuno andNemoto [19].

compensate for the decrease when viewed fromthe downstream towards the upstream. For
instance, a slight increase of the carbon
throughflow from citrate to isocitrate may
decrease the concentration of citrate, while theresulting increase of the throughflow from

oxaloacetate to citrate can compensate for thedecrease. The regulative capacity latent in thethroughflow now tends to make the supporting
reaction cycle robust enough against adverse
disturbances coming from the outside to a certain
extent. The level of the throughflow has to- 16 -

Viva Origino 39 (2011) 11 - 18

internally be determined and to remain somewhat
stable against disturbances of external origin,otherwise there would be no likelihood of havingsuch a robust reaction cycle of internal origin.
At the same time, if the reaction cycle isreally functional in a robust manner, the cycle
itself must eventually be able to help synthesizing
and recovering the missing member moleculefrom within. Otherwise, the robustness of thereaction cycle would have to be lost. We certainly
observed that the initially missing alphaketoglutarate could emerge as a member moleculeof the cycle at a later stage of the reactor
operation. The synthesis of alpha ketoglutarate
became identifiable at about 120 minutes after thestart of the operation and its concentration was
identified to be about 0.4µM as depicted in Figure
3 (right hand side), and the concentration started
to increase since then.

The FMO complex is in charge of trapping
solar photons and transferring the trapped energy
in the form of an exciton, or electron-hole pair,down to the reaction center for synthesizing ATP
molecules. That is light process in thephotosynthetic reaction. Significant in this energy
transduction is its extreme rapidity of order of 100
femto seconds or less for its execution with highefficiency [21-23]. If each of the photon antenna,
the intermediating exciton, and the reaction centeris characterized by its own quantum state
independently, expecting such rapidity and highefficiency would be most unlikely. The only
alternative is to rely on the scheme that the FMO
complex as a whole constitutes a single quantum
or equivalently that the three of the antenna, theexciton and the reaction center are coherently
entangled quantum-mechanically even at ambient
temperatures [24]. Resource exploitation, as inphoton capturing in photosynthesis, occurs under
the stipulation in irreversible thermodynamics
that the faster action takes all, or that ‘first come,first served’ [25]. In particular, quantum
mechanics provides robust material units
processing material flows which would feed upon
available resources as fast as possible.
Moreover, if one further pays attention to thesuccessive fate of ATP molecules synthesized inlight process of the photosynthetic reaction, dark
process synthesizing carbohydrates from waterand carbon dioxide molecules with the help of theenergy released from ATP is seen to follow. That

5. Concluding Remarks
Once prebiotic evolution could have reached
up to the onset of photosynthesis, the intake ofsolar photons as the basic resources would turnout to be the decisive factor. What should
underlie there must be the faster resource intake,since the slower contender looking for the same
resources would have no chance of beating thefaster one. A case in point is the light-harvesting
antenna for photosynthesis implemented in the
Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) protein complex[20].

Figure 3. Time developments of the amount of the reaction products synthesized in the reaction
solutions. The temperature of the high temperature chamber was raised from room temperature up to
120oC over the first 60 minutes linearly and was maintained at that temperature since then. [Left]
Three cases for citrate synthesis were compared. The first one denoted by open circles was for the
standard reaction solution consisting of 1.0 mM of each of oxaloacetate, citrate, isocitrate, alphaketoglutarate, succinate, fumarate, malate, and 10 mM pyruvate in the initial preparation. The second
one denoted by open squares was for the reaction solution in which only pyruvate was absent initiallycompared to the standard one. The third one denoted by open tringles was for the reaction solution inwhich only alpha ketoglutarate was absent initially compared to the standard one. [Right] Synthesesof isocitrate (open squares) and alpha ketoglutarate (open circles) were compared for the reaction
solution differing from the standard one only in that alpha ketoglutarate was absent in the initial
preparation. The observed data included ±1% experimental errors for repetitions for a single run ofthe experiment.

- 17 -

Viva Origino 39 (2011) 11 - 18

is, the energy transformation from the phosphatebonds of ATP being hydrolyzed to the covalentbonds of the carbohydrates to be synthesized.
This energy transformation follows anotherstipulation that will be registered in the finishedrecord, showing that the most efficient overall
reactions will survive over an indefinite period oftime, since the less efficient ones become lessdominant in succeeding generations in terms of
the amount of carbohydrates or the biomass
accumulating in the biosphere. ‘More of the same’is the principal attribute of the reactions withhigher efficiency.
In fact, Darwinian natural selection integrates
both principles of “first come, first served” and“more of the same” into the form of differential
reproduction of heritable traits. What must be
reproduced are the meta-stable products ororganizations exchanging the constituent material
elements with those new ones found and alsoavailable in the immediate neighbourhood.
Nevertheless, the metabolic activity is not limited
to the biological organisms stipulated byDarwinian natural selection. It is much broader in
its implication physically. The present perspective
would make the emergence of Darwinian natural
selection much easier as taking advantage of themeta-stable products that could be possible andalso metabolic even in the absence of priorbiological organisms.
Acknowledgments
Thanks are due to Atsushi Nemoto for helping theauthor with preparing the results presented in
Figure 3.

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24.

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