Elitzur A C
Department of Chemical Physics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel.
J Theor Biol. 1994 Jun 21;168(4):429-59. doi: 10.1006/jtbi.1994.1123.
The question of how life emerged from inanimate matter is closely related to the more fundamental question, namely: What is life? Both issues yield novel insights when discussed in the light of thermodynamics. The model proposed here is based on a simple assumption, namely, that life began with the accidental assembly of a self-replicating molecule. From this assumption the emergence of life naturally follows, enabling a new understanding of evolution as a whole. The evolution of any type of self-replicating systems, even the simplest ones, is shown to be highly efficient in extracting, recording and processing information about the environment. A variety of related issues yield some surprising conclusions when discussed in the thermodynamic context. New processes of order-increase are pointed out, a novel measure of information is proposed, and Lamarckianism is proved to be inconsistent with thermodynamics. Recent works on biogenesis and evolution are critically reviewed.
生命是如何从无生命物质中产生的这一问题，与一个更基本的问题密切相关，即：什么是生命？当从热力学的角度进行讨论时，这两个问题都会产生新颖的见解。这里提出的模型基于一个简单的假设，即生命始于一个自我复制分子的偶然组装。基于这一假设，生命的出现自然而然地随之而来，从而使我们能够对整个进化过程有全新的理解。任何类型的自我复制系统，即使是最简单的系统，其进化在提取、记录和处理有关环境的信息方面都被证明是高度有效的。当在热力学背景下讨论时，各种相关问题会得出一些惊人的结论。指出了新的秩序增加过程，提出了一种新颖的信息度量方法，并证明拉马克主义与热力学不一致。对近期关于生物发生和进化的研究进行了批判性综述。
