Self and the Beginning of Life 75“9x6” b2726 Self and the Phenomenon of Life: A Biologist Examines Life from Molecules to Humanity- Crick F. (1981) Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature. Simon & Schuster,
New York, p. 88. - Kauffman S. (1995) At Home in the Universe. Oxford Univ. Press,
New York, p. 31. - Orgel LE. (October 1994) The origin of life on the earth. Scientific Am
271: 78. - Peckham M. (1959) The Origin of Species: A Variorum Text. Univ. of
Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, p. 748. - Monod stated: “What, before the event (appearance of life on Earth), were
the chances that this would occur? The present structure of the biosphere
far from excludes the possibility that the decisive event occurred only once.
Which would mean its a priori probability was virtually zero...This idea
is distasteful to many scientists. Science can neither say nor do anything
about a unique occurrence...If it was unique, as may perhaps have been
the appearance of life itself, then before it did appear its chances of doing
so were infinitely slender. The universe was not pregnant with life nor the
biosphere with man. Our number came up in the Monte Carlo game. ”
See: Monod J. (1970) Le Hazard et la Necessite. (Editions de seuil, Paris),
trans. Wainhouse AG. (1971) Chance and Necessity. Knopf, New York,
pp. 144–145. (Quoted with permission from Penguin Random House.) - Eigen M. (1992) Steps Towards Life. Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford.
- The simplest free-living organism we can find today is the bacteria Myco-
plasma genitalium, which has 525 genes. See: Fraser CM, Gocayne JD,
White O, et al. (1995) The minimum gene complement of Mycoplasma
genitalium. Science 270: 397–403. In a different approach, Venter and his
colleagues synthesized the genome of Mycoplasma mycoides and deter-
mined the minimum number of genes necessary for survival and repro-
duction. They ended up with 473 genes. See: Hutchison CA III, Chuang
R-Y, Noskov VN, et al. (2016) Design and synthesis of a minimal bacterial
genome. Science 351: aad6253. (DOI: 10.1126/science.aad6253.) It should
be noted that these bacteria with a synthetic genome thrive only under the
most ideal laboratory conditions, with all the nutrients provided for in the
culture medium. The theoretical first living organism on Earth was not so
fortunate, and would presumably need many more genes to cope with the
harsh prebiotic environment.