Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
a self-sustained feedback between records and metabolic networks, allowing
further increases in complexity.
This organization, which we can now call living organization, will permit
a limitless exploration of a potentially huge sequence space (of the modular
templates) that can also be matched with an unlimited space of functions.
6. THE OPEN STRUCTURE OF DARWINIAN EVOLUTION
Unlike the limited world of HAS, the appearance of informational organization
generates a new form of self-preservation: it generates a process in which (a set
of) individual organizations reproduce their basic functional dynamics, bringing
about an unlimited variety of equivalent systems, of ways of manifesting that
dynamics, which are not subject to any predetermined upper bound of organiza-
tional complexity (even if they are, indeed, to the energetic-material restrictions
imposed by a finite environment and by the universal physico-chemical laws)
(Ruiz-Mirazo, Umerez & Moreno, submitted). Thus, the key of this form of
self-preservation is the following: On the one hand, any of these systems can
adopt a particular, hereditary, form of organization. On the other hand, all of
them, however different they may be, share a basic common organizational form
(as has been described) whose long-term preservation depends precisely on this
capacity of continuous, unlimited variation.
Let us examine the different elements and relations underlying this new form
of preservation through open-ended evolution. First, we need a set
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of certain
individual 'units', which have to be autonomous agents (organisms) capable of
template reproduction and whose organization is based in two complementary
polymers (which implies a full Geno-Phenotype duality: the genetic level is
separated from the organization of the agent). We shall call this organization, as
has been described, a basic informational organization (BIO). Second, these units
will constitute a web of recursive interactions. Third, this web is a populational
and ecological system. Populational: it requires a critical mass of individuals
sharing the same specific form of SM (phenotype); a certain degree of variability
with buffering (within which selection, namely, differential reproduction with
conservation of form, is generated) is also necessary; Ecological: it requires
the existence of different kinds (species) of individual components (organisms).
However, from an initial unique type a diversity of kinds will be generated,
so that the boundary conditions for the SM of a given type start to depend on
the interactions with other types (ecological relations). As a consequence, the
different reproductive rates will depend on the recursive relations between types
(and between individuals of the same type).
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The system has to include certain degree of redundancy: A unique individual component is not enough.
