Principles and Mechanisms of Biological Evolution - Molecular Theory of the Living Cell - page 480

biological phenomena that have been accounted for in terms of their molecular
counterparts, or molecular mechanisms. If this perception is accurate, what is (are)
the novel concept(s) that has (have) enabled the bridging between the macroscopic
and microscopic worlds in biology?
There may be five potential areas of biology that either have already or will have
experienced in the coming decades the same kind of molecular revolutions that
have transformed physics and chemistry throughout the twentieth century. These
areas are (1) genetics , (2) enzymology , (3) active mechanical processes including
muscle contraction and active transport, (4) cell biology , and (5) evolution (see
Rows d through h in Table 14.3 ).
The first molecular revolution in biology occurred when Avery et al. (1944)
demonstrated that the substance responsible for transmitting a phenotype from one
cell to another was DNA, thus identifying Mendel's “heritable factor” with DNA,
and when Watson and Crick (1953) discovered the double helical structure of DNA
which suggested possible molecular mechanisms for replicating DNA. The second
and third molecular revolutions occurred more or less simultaneously in the last
decade of the twentieth century when the laser-based single-molecule manipulation
techniques were invented and applied to studying single molecules of enzymes
(e.g., cholesterol oxidase; see Sect. 11.3 ) and molecular motors (e.g., actomyosin
system; see Sect. 11.4 ). The novel molecular concept that enabled the bridging of
the gap between the traditional ensemble-averaged enzymology and muscle con-
traction physiology and their molecular mechanisms is here suggested to be the
conformon discussed in Chaps. 8 and 11 . The fourth molecular revolution in
biology may be identified with the bridging of the phenomenological cell theory
first formulated by Schleiden and Schwann in 1938 (Swanson 1964) and the modern
molecular cell biology based on the concepts of the conformon described in Chaps.
8 and 11 and intracellular dissipative structures (IDSs, or more briefly dissipatons )
discussed in Sect. 3.1 . In addition to conformons and IDSs , a third novel element
was introduced to biology at the cell level, namely, the cell language theory
presented in Sect. 6.1 (see Row h in Table 14.3 ), the cell language being essential
for the cell's role as the smallest unit of molecular computing in nature (Ji 1999a,
2002b). The fifth and final molecular revolution in biology may be identified with
the realization that
The unit of biological evolution is the living cell itself. Hence, without understanding the
workings of the cell, it is impossible to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying
biological evolution. (14.1)
Statement 14.1 will be referred to as the Cell Theory of Evolution (see Row h in
Table 14.3 ), which is described in Sects. 14.2 , 14.3 , 14.4 , and 14.5 as a possible
microscopic theory of evolution that can account for or subsume the macroscopic
theory of evolution proposed by Darwin in 1859, just as quantum mechanics
formulated in the early decades of the twentieth century accounts for or subsumes
the Newtonian (or classical) mechanics of the late seventeenth century (see Row a
in Table 14.3 ). Statement 14.1 is consistent with the so-called Principle of the
Evolution-Development Complementarity discussed below (see Statement 14.7).