Review
Version 1
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Life’s Mechanism
Version 1
: Received: 28 June 2023 / Approved: 29 June 2023 / Online: 29 June 2023 (07:24:40 CEST)
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
Pierce, S. Life’s Mechanism. Life 2023, 13, 1750. Pierce, S. Life’s Mechanism. Life 2023, 13, 1750.
Abstract
The multifarious internal workings of organisms are difficult to reconcile with a single feature defining a state of ‘being alive’. Indeed, definitions of life rely on emergent properties (growth, capacity to evolve, agency) only symptomatic of intrinsic functioning. Empirical studies demonstrate that biomolecules including ratcheting/rotating enzymes, ribozymes and pigment molecules undergo repetitive conformation state changes driven by energy absorption, excitation and relaxation. They exhibit disparate structures, but govern processes relying on directional physical motion (DNA transcription, translation, ATP synthesis, cytoskeleton transport, photosynthetic resonance energy transfer) and share the principle of repetitive uniplanar conformation changes driven by thermodynamic gradients, producing dependable unidirectional motion: ‘heat engines’ exploiting thermodynamic disequilibria to perform work. Recognition that disparate biological molecules share a heat engine principle governing directional motion, working in self-regulating networks, allows a mechanistic definition: life is a self-regulating process whereby matter undergoes cyclic, uniplanar conformation state changes that convert thermodynamic disequilibria into directed motion, performing work that locally reduces entropy. ‘Living things’ are structures including autonomous networks of units operating on the heat engine principle. Death is loss of integrated heat engine function. These principles are independent of any specific chemical environment, and can be applied to other biospheres.
Keywords
Brownian motor; Death; Definition of life; Feynman–Smoluchowski ratchet; heat engine; Theory of life
Subject
Biology and Life Sciences, Biology and Biotechnology
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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