Emergence of information processing in biological systems and the origin of life.

Abstract

As every life form is composed of cells, elements of consciousness, namely memory and sentience, must be grounded in mechanisms that are integral to unicellular organisms. Earlier studies indicated that cellular cytoskeletal structures consisting of excitable, flexible, and oscillating polymers such as microtubules, along with quantum events, are potentially responsible for information processing and thus consciousness. This work attempts to solve the unknown, that is, how, at the spark of life, the phenomenon of cellular information processing first appears. This study posits that the spatially distributed wave energy of the molecules of an incepting cell interacts with space and generates a rotating bioinformation field, forming a vortex. This vortex, the local energy maximum, whose inbound and outbound energy fluxes represent signal reception and dispersal, is a critical step in the spark of life responsible for information storage, and with incremental wave superpositions, exhibits information processing. The vorticity of the rotating field is computed, and the obtained field characteristics indicated the emergence of a prebiotic complex to initiate information processing. Furthermore, the developed system model explains how perturbations from the environment are converted into response signals for the emanation of sense, locomotion, nutrition, and asexual reproduction, the fundamental evolutionary building blocks of prokaryotes. Further research directions include explaining how the energy potential available in the bio-information field and the vortex leads to the first formation of genetic material, emergence of cytoskeleton, and extension of bio-information field to multi-cellular organisms.