Genes, Brains, and Human Potential The Science and Ideology of Intelligence

110 REAL GENES, REAL INTELLIGENCE

Another scenario suggests that such structures originated in the vol-
canic vents on ocean fl oors. As Nick Lane (following the work of Michael
Russell) puts it, such vents “ were the ideal incubators for life, providing
a steady supply of hydrogen gas, carbon dioxide, mineral catalysts, and a
labyrinth of interconnected micropores (natu ral compartments similar to
cells, with fi lm- like membranes).”^4
Either way, not only can amino acids so form, they can also readily
combine into strings (polymers), the basic structures of peptides and pro-
teins. Many of these strings are also known to have at least weak catalytic
properties and so are able to assist in the formation of other molecules,
including strings of RNA or DNA from naturally occurring nucleotides.
It has been demonstrated in laboratories how chains of such components
can create reactive networks, known as “autocatalytic sets.” As Steen
Rasmussen in Astrobiology Magazine (October 21, 2014) puts it, “An auto-
catalytic network works like a community; each molecule is a citizen who
interacts with other citizens and together they help create a society.”
So these molecular networks may have constituted primordial
“metabolisms”: self- sustaining, self- organ izing forms. Th ey could have
taken in components and energy from outside the system, fueling their
chemical reactions, maintaining their structures, and then dissipating
wastes back into the wider environment. Diff er ent combinations of
constituents, with diff er ent reaction properties, would have survived in
diff er ent conditions. And they would have “evolved,” as variation (indi-
vidual diff erences) arose through more or less random modifi cations to
constituents; for example, peptide structures might change under chang-
ing temperature, altering reaction rates and directions and so creating
new potentials.

GENES AS RESOURCES, NOT CAUSES

Such discoveries are transforming ideas about the place of genes in the

constitution of living things. Clearly, if life originated in such molecular

interactive systems, only later did the ge ne tic polymers (RNA and then

DNA) arrive on the scene as what we now call “genes.” Rather than the

structures and order of life being created by pre- existing genes, it seems

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