Preliminary remarks to an integrative theory of evolution.

Abstract

For nearly a century the main focus in biological disciplines such as molecular biology, biochemistry, genetics and evolutionary theory was cellular life as a machine like process in which mechanistic pathways regulate metabolism, genetic reading and translation into proteins and evolution by variations (random error replications) and selection. Modern biochemistry started with the cellular theory of life. Also the modern synthesis focused on cells at the starting event of life. The dominance of this paradigm lasted until ten years ago. Then the comeback of virology offered new empirical data and explanatory models of how viruses determine cellular life through an abundance of parasite host interactions that overrule cellular processes. The RNA world hypothesis demonstrated that prior to cellular life RNA group interactions were at the beginning of biological selection before cellular life emerged. Last but not least the central dogma of molecular biology collapsed when epigenetics demonstrated that history and developmental experiences of the past can be epigenetically imprinted and serve as identity markings that in every replication process of any cell in any organism on this planet the timely and locally coordinated replication is regulated and orchestrated by these programmings. In the light of this knowledge a better explanatory model than an extension of the modern synthesis will be more successful in the 21st century.