Economics of "Life"

The concept of Currency evolved around 2000 BC. Its form, shape & size have been changing ever since. It gained importance into the society as a medium of exchange and trade, taking over the earlier practices such as barter system. It helped nations bring their economies on a common platform. It boosted trade and built relations among different countries. Today, the same money seems to be influencing our daily lives. As we see, changes in the US dollar price having big impact on the decisions taken by different financial organizations all over the globe. Even the natural resources a country has are being calibrated using the same medium of exchange. Today it has become one of the most important concepts in the history of social development of humans.
 

Moreover when we zoom into the lives of the individuals in our society today, we see the major driving force or motivation to work is Money itself. This is true to the extent that most of us participating in this “rat race” never try to understand or question the basic need for running in the direction we are going. Turning to the classic evolution theories, fight amongst individuals/ species for the available resource has been the decision factor for survivability of an organism in a given population. The “rat race” can be a result of the same. Keeping aside the greed aspect, it is very important and interesting to know, from where we acquired the knowledge of “economics”? Or how this concept was discovered? Or was it a necessity based invention as in most of the cases? I believe the knowledge is already embedded within us, as life has its own economics.

The way we manage our income-expenditure equations and the noteworthy common Indian mentality to economize every aspect of daily life is amusing. If we zoom into “LIFE” itself, we may find many answers for this behavior. Every organism has a genome (the Blueprint), having genes, coding/non-coding regions, accessory elements (regulatory elements) etc. In all the aspects of organization, growth & reproduction of cell we see precision in the usage of all the above mentioned components. The size of genomes/ genes/ proteins, number of genes, percentage of non-coding regions in genomes, expression of particular genes at particular time points, their amounts, re-usability of particular proteins for different functions/ reactions/ interactions (hub proteins, having flexible structures), the way these elements fit into a series of reactions forming networks (may it be gene regulatory networks, biochemical network or signalling networks), all this is following certain thermodynamic constrains. In all this, the complexity is huge. But using all the above mentioned information in a genome, still following the constraints, cell tries to survive adjusting to given environmental factors. Ones a cell is born (as in after division), its internal machinery starts transacting with the environment using the currency of energy. It gains energy from exterior (in different forms). According to the availability of resources (and signals in case of multicellular organisms) it prioritizes its actions to either go into dormant (sustain), growth or reproduction/ division state. From the whole organism’s point of view, the maintenance charges also matter. The bigger the entity or component more energy is spent on taking care of it. Having more genes/ bigger sized genome (more information) is not always advisable for a cell. Bigger the genome, more energy is spent on its thermodynamic stability, repair mechanism etc. Same is the case with, cell as a system. All the proportions of its contents and overall size have to be maintained. Hence the rules seem to be universal. Although the evolution can be seen from two different dimensions (thermodynamic constraint based or adaptation based), both of which are leading to the same conclusion that the genome has prior information about the economics it is dealing with.

Likewise, most of rules seem to be embedded within us, which when explored result into progress in our thought process. The concept of language (grammar), programmability of a system (coding the machines), abstracts (mathematics), music etc, are derivatives of the same universal rule book nature follows (or may be have created). We need more unbiased observation systems and theories to learn more about the same. Interestingly one lifetime may not be enough to reach this state of understanding and knowledge about nature, we can merely try.

Chemicals to Conscious

A stretch of 200-400 ribonucleic acids moving in and around some of the organisms on earth, sometimes integrating into their genomes, otherwise just creating copies of themselves, in many cases controlling the fate of the host cells and at times killing them by turning lethal – we humans have named them The VIROIDS. It’s the simplest and most mysterious living structure known, which replicates itself and has no cell like structure or a layer/ coating covering the RNA. It is made of just a naked strand of RNA (also suggested to be showing activity like ribozyme), with very little known about its mechanism of replication in the host cell. In the last post I wrote about viruses, they being amazing creatures showing us a different lifestyle or a new way of living. Ever since I read about viroids in more details, I am much more mystified about the purpose of life. What is it that organisms like viroids heading to? What is their purpose in nature? Is it just to sustain/replicate? Or maybe there is none and we can rely on physics and chemistry to give us more details about these aspects of life (biological entities)? Only time can tell…!!

All these properties suggest us a lot to call it a selfish genetic material as suggested by selfish gene theory. Another important point to be noticed in the lifestyle of viroids being the acceptance of genes/genetic material to be integrated in each other’s (host/parasite) genomes, of course with specificity (needs to be explored more extensively), which suggests a single source of universal information. This cross compatibility is again a unique feature to life. There is one theory which states that life originated on earth only when the genetic material reached earth from outer space. This theory is supported by some ancient meteorite samples showing traces of nucleic acids. It seems the entire puzzle pieces may fit together some day to give us an answer to the ultimate quest of the origin of life. The field of synthetic biology is trying to answer the same above mentioned "HOW" class of issues. Consider, even if this question is answered in a few decades from now, the next will be; “WHY” set of questions which will pose more difficult challenges to all the human kind.
 

Genomes of all the organisms exhibit the same behaviour of maintaining their own identity. We can assume a cell (as a basic unit) to have the consciousness to replicate itself and propagate the genetic material. But how can we think of a single RNA strand to be embedded with such information to carry out all these activities (as in the case of viroids)? This indeed is difficult to digest. The plausible way to think about this phenomenon is that may be the genetic material has a characteristic to divide itself, managing the surrounding chemical components given optimal chemical conditions. To think over this or any such wild hypotheses we need to broaden our spectrum of thoughts. Since our perception of the universe is limited by our senses and different technologies we have developed to observe different phenomenon occurring in it. What if, the truth lies somewhere beyond our horizon and is inconceivable to us? We never know.
 

Simple components coming together to form a higher order structure, is a very common phenomenon seen in the universe. Living systems are an example of the same. They have a very high degree of organization, still following the laws of the universe (importantly the entropy law).  We would not be thinking so much; rather personally I would not be writing this blog if it was not for the consciousness that we exist in this universe. Does that mean that any entity in this universe above certain threshold of degree of organization, achieves a consciousness, such as to distinguish between itself and the surrounding universe? Secondly is it that a certain class of elements (nucleic material or so) is responsible to bestow the power to do such differentiation? Answers to these would be the points where the Chemicals will meet the Conscious. I really do not know the answer (or even have a philosophical opinion yet) and to find out I wish that the theory of reincarnation would be true. But at least for this moment, all these thoughts leave me astound and more curious about everything.

Finally I also want to put forth an interesting concluding thought, I thought about:
If God really exists as a being (meaning an entity with a materialistic body), then he designed biological systems only to understand the amount of complexity he can create and which can sustain.