A Proposed Framework for Cellular Evolution

Abstract

This article shows how a good understanding of the design principles that underlie life is crucial in understanding its evolution. It gives concrete examples on how designs can be applied to evolution in the same way an engineer uses designs in creating building or bridges, or a software engineer that designs programs that can evolve. If we apply the notion of a design for evolution and realize that it is in its basis an evolving system of molecular machines, we can start to reverse engineer evolution and understand life. This article shows scenario’s for the origin of life and cel- lular life and how eukaryotic cells evolved to multicellular organisms. The driving force for evolution would be the intrinsic capability of the molecular machines to evolve and this basic tendency to evolve its ultimate goal. The scenarios that can be deduced following a design framework are drastically different from the theories that have been proposed so far. Based on the premise that that evolution can be modeled on a design framework, we can deduce that life evolved inside-out and that ontology reflects phylogeny on a molecular basis