Biological Systems

Biological theory and knowledge have been to date the most successful general field of endeavor of all the sciences. It has achieved not only a relative comprehensivity of approach, but also simultaneously a high level specificity in relation to the essential systems and components of all known biological forms, and therefore concommitant also of experimental control over a broad range of biological phenomena at a discrete level. There are many residual areas that the biological sciences have not yet sufficiently resolved, and yet the field of biology in general has reached a kind of paradigmatic plateau that cannot be expected to change unless and until we discover new forms of extraterrestrial life on earth. But even now new species of animal and plant are being regularly discovered, and much remains to be learned about how living systems function and survive, both in a specific cellular and organismic sense and in a general ecological and evolutionary sense. The era of biological knowledge development that we are in, called by many a biological information revolution, is really one of hyperspecialization and superrefinement of knowledge that is elaborated within conventional domains and emerging interdisciplinary hybrids.

It strikes me that there are central questions or problem sets that are initially appropriate for a conceptualization of biology as biological systems theory and method. I will state these problem sets as follows:

1. What were the precise origins and preconditions that resulted in the early formation and first evolutionary phases of life on earth?

2. What are the systematic processes that can account in a stochastic manner for the rise and fall of species and orders of life forms (in other words, in general terms why do species become extinct on a regular basis and why do mass extinctions occur with a given supercritical periodicity?)

3. What are the systemic and metasystemic relationships that occur that consistently account for the growth, development and higher order functioning of multi-cellular organisms, or the emergence of synergistic properties associated with multi-cellular organization derivative of cell structure, metabolic specialization and differentiation?

4. How can we account for metabiotic and general evolutionary processes in a systematic manner that will allow us to account for the entire range of variation and complication of such patterning as it is and has been exhibited on earth, especially at multiple levels of systemic integration and organization?

5. How can we develop a systematic and accurate system of classification of all life forms that will account for all variation of patterning between species and between populations (subspecies) and that will allow us to accurately and faithfully reconstruct the fossil record of natural history?

6. How can we apply our lessons in earthbound biological systems, in our terrestrial biosphere, to the understanding of possible life-forms beyond the gravitational boundaries of the planet earth, and how can we gain new knowledge about such possible systems?

These central questions then compose the basis for the elaboration of biological systems theory beyond the work in the various subdisciplines of biology that is being carried forward around the world. In regard to the first and the last questions especially, it must be emphasized that in a completely scientific and stochastic view of reality that is adopted in a natural systems theoretic perspective, what is possible in the long run becomes not only probable but, in an infinite sense, certain. That life emerged and took shape and prospered for at least 3.5 billion years on earth suggests strongly the larger probability that life, possibly in some alternative form, has also developed and succeeded in other parts of the universe. In the largest scale imaginable, this is almost a certainty. The likelihood of our being truly unique as a living system in the universe diminishes rapidly as we take into account increasing scales of vastness in our consideration and possible observation other stellar systems and planets that may be more or less similar to our own.

It is evident that the mostly likely form of life we will eventually discover will be some kind of bacterial system, possibly kinds of extremophiles that derive primary catabolic energy from a range of exotic inorganic sources of heat and potential activation. Unfortunately, except perhaps for indirect effects on the coloration of water or land, these will be the least observable or the least likely to attempt to communicate with us across the vast reaches of space. Less likely will be the organization of multi-cellular systems, and we should possibly expect some kind of eukaryotic-like structure of the cellular organization of such systems if and when they are encountered. This eukaryotic structure does not necessarily have to resemble eukaryote cells on earth, nor do they necessarily have to have the same pattern of amino acids or DNA structures that drive their reproduction and evolutionary development.

It is most likely that we will eventually have to travel to find these extra-terrestrial sources of life. If there are living systems elaborated enough and evolved to the level of producing intelligent systems capable of creating culture and technology for space travel, then it is likely that such systems will be much fewer and further between than more basic biological systems, and the ranges to be spanned, and the likelihood of their encounter, will drop off considerably. On-going efforts to establish consistent and intelligent-like reception of signals in space have yet to pay any dividends, but are probably still considered the most direct and therefore most likely means available to discovering intelligent extraterrestrial systems in the universe. Otherwise speculation about extraterrestrial systems is more the stuff of science fiction and fantasy than of science fact, but its possibility continues to fire and fuel the scientific imagination to reach for the stars.

The first three questions above are what questions and seek to answer basic questions of a systems nature concerning the origin, organizational patterning and developmental processes of living systems on earth.The three later questions deal with how our understanding of biological systems, and especially of their inherent complexity, can be sufficiently organized and defined in a manner to yield useful results when we extend the understanding of such systems to previous or potentially future or extraterrestrial systems. In all, it can be demonstrated that a systems approach to biological theory and method yields a framework of study and approach somewhat different than the traditional branches that have developed in the biological fields, which have tended to specialize and focus on specific problem sets within the larger context. Only evolutionary and general ecology studies have a systems-style approach, and the later is the most systems-like of all the biological sciences but it is also paradoxically the least paradigmatically unified or integrated as a single framework of understanding.

In general, it can be said that the biological systems approach follows from and incorporates a largely ecological perspective, and most of the questions dealt with above stem from and relate back to an ecological framework of understanding. The trouble is that traditional ecology as it has become defined within the biological sciences has a largely analytical approach that requires some enlargement of its central tenets and concepts before it can accommodate an enlarged perspective of biological systems theory, and I have termed this approach generally as an eco-evolutionary one that seeks to combine an evolutionary with a general ecological perspective. Such an ecological perspective has been inherent to all earthbound living systems from their first origins, and there has been no separating the evolutionary rise of such systems from the surroundings that have supported and constrained that rise in critical and influential ways. Indeed, all living systems have been as much a product of their ecological history as they have been of their evolutionary history, if it makes any sense to speak of an ecological history, and it is even becoming increasingly apparent that the biosphere, from its first beginnings, has had a critical shaping influence on the geophysical world around it and has therefore altered the course of natural earth history in fundamental and critical ways.

I believe if we are to extend a conception of biological systems theory to embrace potential non-terrestrial forms of life, then we must do so in the beginning from an ecological framework that defines the limits and sets the stage for such development to occur in the first place and that interacts with this development at every step of the way. In such a manner we would expect to find living systems on planetoids that are within a certain range of the central star system in question, neither too close and therefore too hot or too far away and therefore not warm enough to support life within a solar framework. This is not to say that living systems cannot have originated and be sustained on the basis of volcanism or even some other system that produced reliable sources of heat or other forms of chemical energy. Living systems can be expected to evolve with a certain chance of occurrence, given the right concatenation of elements and events anywhere and at anytime these conditions occur with a certain order and regularity. We do not necessarily understand in any exact way what such a combination, or range of alternative combinations, that might have a good chance of producing living or proto-biotic life forms, but they may not be as uncommon in the universe as we may have once believed.

If life is to become and remain successful, then living systems must meet the challenge of interacting with their surroundings in such a manner as to actively change these surroundings to make them more suitable for living systems to exist in the first place. So often have we focused exclusively upon the evolutionary adaptability of living organisms to environmental limitations and extremes, that we have scarcely paid attention to the possibility that in metabiotic contexts living systems as often as not may be the environmental context, and may have a critical shaping influence on this context, once organisms have developed and been unleashed into the open. Dirt and soil, so replete with microorganisms, are a good example of the interaction between organic and inorganic, as are the plankton that line the surface of the sea like a carpet of growing cells. It is not difficult to see in a season a single gopher or mole create the basis for the erosion of an entire hillside where just earlier student gardens sat. Atmospheric conditions without a doubt have been modified by the widespread occurrence and interaction of respiring and photosynthetic systems, and we must query to what extent the natural hydrologic and other cycles of the earth are not critically influenced by living systems and their interaction.

If such problems and perspectives of these are framed within an ecological model, we must understand that such an ecological framework does not go unrevised or substantially unenlarged compared to what it has been so far. It is a framework that must readily embrace evolutionary and other biological perspectives, and must be able to accommodate these within a single theoretical framework. Thus a biological systems approach requires an expanded ecological framework that embraces evolutionary and cellular biological theory and knowledge as well. It requires as well, I believe, an opening of our scientific minds about how we conduct science and what constitute acceptable criteria for scientific investigation. An expanded metaparadigm of science should at least in philosophy if not in practice transcend the paradigmatic politics and social processes that serve to gate-keep and channel activity and resources in the biological sciences within a conventional framework.

If science is based upon the increase of the known at the expense of the unknown, then its objective becomes the definition of what is possible from what remains impossible. This discrimination cannot be made beforehand except through correct theoretical prediction and experimental validation. What is ultimately possible is never certain in our knowledge, and the conventional tendency in the face of uncertainty and a lack of clear knowledge is to stamp things "impossible" until otherwise demonstrated. If things are improbably or unlikely does not mean that something is therefore impossible. Life in the universe may be highly unlikely, but the odds in the structure of the long run are still in favor of its chance and infrequent occurrence. We cannot say clearly or not what forms such life has to take--whether it even has to have a cellular basis as we understand this, or whether it is possible that life can evolve in some alternative non-cellular manner. The problem of the uncertainty of possibility is that what is truly possible is so often obscured and confused by those things that remain impossible. It was believed by most that humans would never learn how to fly, and this was considered by many therefore an impossibility. We believe now that faster-than-light travel may be impossible, and that it is impossible to reverse the process of time, and that it will always be impossible to know directly what exists inside of a blackhole. These may or may not be true statements--we do not know and are ultimately uncertain. Science can say something about these issues, and indeed it must say something about it if it is to be interesting and theoretically productive.

There is a class of general questions, like that of ultimate creation, which I believe to be fundamentally beyond the purview of science to address one way or another. Science can explain creative or constructive processes that lead to the current disposition of the universe, and that accounts for its natural development or evolutionary history. But science cannot make a scientific statement about where "it all originally started" or how. To do so is to take a leap of faith and to posit an unfalsifiable and untestable kind of statement without the kind of proof that science needs to remain a science. Science may therefore push the envelope upon these kinds of questions, but I do not think it is ever possible for science to answer such questions in any meaningful or final manner.

Of course, it can be reasonably argued the other way around--if God ultimately created the universe, then God is a real entity, a kind of being with creative powers, and this should be therefore amenable to scientific investigation. If God is only a symbolic mythology in lieu of a reasonable and natural explanation for events and things as they are and have been, then God becomes off limits to scientific study. What we can say in resolution of this kind of paradox is that, when given a choice, science should always opt for the most reasonable and naturalistic explanation possible. Science has ultimately to adopt a blind model of reality, which states that all things that are are so ultimately as the result of random and stochastic processes. In other words, in Einstein's words, the universe and reality was a dice-game if God did not ultimately make it. If God is real and not mere symbological explanation, then ultimately its intentions and reality will be revealable and available to science for explanation. Until that time, and barring any contravening evidence, science must opt for the blind view of the world. This is the appropriate "agnostic" view of science to matters of ultimate reality.

The problem of the paradigmatic closure of science is when it constructs theoretical explanations for how and why things happen in the world as they appear to do, and then becomes committed in an ideological manner to the validity and verification of these theories regardless of any contravening or contradictory evidence or the existence of alternative theories that are reasonable or competitive. This kind of paradigmatic closure is often implicit and happens unconsciously in the process of designing experiments and justifying research proposals in which we substitute "certain" knowledge that is ultimately untenable for "possible" knowledge that remains fundamentally uncertain. In this case, the authority of science tends to bit off more than it can chew, its eyes being typically larger than its stomach for the unknown.

The principle concern of biological systems theory has been a general accounting of the metabiotic foundations of living systems and a realistic description of their patterning in terms of their ecological interrelationships and principle structural processes that are essential to their evolutionary growth, development and change.

It is debatable which features should characterize living life forms beyond the framework of the earth's biosphere. For known biological systems, we may say the following universal characteristics also apply:

All biological life forms are organic and carbon-based, and depend greatly on hydrogen bonding and hydrogen bonding potentials for their basic molecular structures and processes.

All biological life forms follow the central dogma of genetic replication of complex protein structures and associated macro-molecules.

All biological information and design is contained in replicative RNA and/or DNA structures.

All biological life forms maintain a continuous meta-biotic relationship with a bio-geophysical substrate from which it derives its primary form of energy and into which it excretes its waste products of metabolism.

From a more general systems standpoint, it may be said that all living systems tend to differentiate from the simple toward the more complex.

All living systems are therefore complex self-organizing and self-replicating systems.

An acceptable definition of living systems must include the following components:

1. All living systems exhibit properties of self-sustaining and self-organizing growth.

2. All living systems are organized into fundamental components called cells.

3. All living systems consist of evolving populations of organisms that change over time in adaptation to changing environmental conditions.

4. All living systems respond to and interact with their environment

5. All living systems follow a natural life-cycle of birth, development, maturity and death.

6. All living systems maintain a complex metabolic functioning upon the cellular level that is maintained in equilibrium within certain tolerance limits.

7. All living systems achieve populational longevity and intergenerational continuity through reproduction. A population that fails to successfully reproduce is an extinct population.

8. All living systems tend to cohere and exist partially integrated in metabiotic environments that feature: 1. important geo-physical cycles; 2. trophic-niche stratification relating to bio-behavioral adaptation of different organisms; 3. critical bio-geophysical interactions upon which a complex eco-system equilibrium is based.

9. Change is an intrinsic aspect of these complex community systems, and this change is both exogenous and endogenous and biogenic and physio-genic in origin and consequence.

10. All living systems follow a typical cycle of recurrent growth involving four stages:

1. conception and latency

2. period of exponential increase

3. period of sustained maturity

4. period of decline and demise

Biological Systems Theory

Significant and steady progress has been made in the biological sciences in detailed understanding the structures and patterns of life, especially upon a microscopic and bio-chemical level, and in the technological applications and extensions relating to this understanding. Less progress has been achieved upon a macrobiological and ecological scale, though yet significant and noteworthy. The principle concern of biological systems theory from a metascientific point of view is therefore an understanding of what can be called the metabiotic context in which life originated, including the conditions that promoted the stochastic formation of the first reproductive life forms, and the development and interaction of this context within an eco-evolutionary context. It is not that we do not understand a great deal about the metabiotics of living systems already, as we are clear upon the environmental requirements that such systems need in order to function and achieve their development and survival. What appears to be lacking in this regard can be called a central organizational theory, a grand synthesis, that comprehends all biological systems, at all levels and in every context of their articulation and occurrence, in a systematic and coordinate manner. Perhaps this is an impossible goal, given the inherent complexity and indeterminateness of all biological systems, especially upon a macroscopic level. But it is clear as well that life has achieved remarkable success upon earth as a result of its ability to maintain both an internal sense of organization through adaptation, and an external sense of order in relation to the metabiotic environment, and it is clear that without this effective kind of order life would have probably failed long ago.

Biological systems are complex molecular structures that are so arranged that they interact in a manner that permits: 1. Continuous growth and regeneration of the system derived from elements drawn for the immediate environment; 2. Reproductive modification and evolutionary differentiation of such systems such that in time, a single system, will become two or more separate systems; 3. A self-sustaining metabiotic equilibrium to be established between the system and its host environment.

Any system that meets these three criteria, more or less, can be categorized as a living biological system. The minimal form that such systems have taken on earth have been in viral and bacterial, or prokaryotic. These minimal forms of living system determine that something like a cell is the minimal constituent organization of living systems. But even viruses can be seen as essentially parasitic extra-cellular entities that depend nevertheless upon cell invasion and subsequent lyses for the fulfillment of basic living requirements. It follows that a pre-biotic system must have been a kind of pre-cellular system that nevertheless permitted the eventual development of simple cellular forms, and the movement from some kind of pre-cellular to fully cellular form must have entailed the bounding of nucleic acid chains constituting the RNA-DNA complement of a cell within the cytoplasm contained within a cell-wall, or glyocalyx, and the subsequent differentiation of internalized organelles or cellular substructures that enhanced the equilibrium and function of the cell.

The amazing feature of all biological systems on earth is their remarkable protein plasticity which is the product of the central dogma of earth-bound biology, the formation and conformation of complex protein structures from basic amino acids, and the metabolization of stored forms of chemical energy for the construction and function of these complex molecular structures. This basic protein plasticity translates into the adaptive functioning and formation of complex mechanisms of biological tissue, such as motors and sensory apparatus, that permits the multi-cellular organization of life to achieve new levels of integration of such systems. We cannot ignore this degree of plasticity of form and function in our consideration of the evolutionary development of complex metabiotic systems.

It follows that any biological system that occurs beyond terrestrial limits for earthbound biological systems must have minimally these basic adaptive traits, though the particulars of how they function and may be organized may vary considerably. I would predict that all or at least most biological systems discoverable in the universe would probably be carbon based, or what we could refer to as "organic" systems, and that these systems would probably utilize the elements of hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen in very similar ways as these processes occur in terrestrial biological systems. This has much to do with the electrostatic characteristics and hydrogen bond characteristics associated with combinations of these elements. It seems inconceivable to think of any living system, especially as a complex metabiotic system, outside of some source of water. Water has attributes that make it uniquely appropriate for biological systems. Water may have been a common byproduct of many early planetary formation processes, but the train of natural events that would permit its accumulation on a scale as found on earth, the watery planet, may be relatively unusual, and I would suggest, probably a necessary prerequisite for the formation of any living system. Large masses of water, as found in the oceans, permitted the cooling and stabilization of the temperature of the earth and a regulation of its climates. It would have permitted the kind of displacement of continental land forms and the drift we find as on the earth.

Early prebiotic conditions for life demanded the presence of large, stabilizing body of water and a hydrologic cycle. The atmosphere of the planet would not have been of the same composition as it is today, and may have passed through various phases of ammonia or carbon dioxide or sulfur dioxide compounds. The large abundance of silica in the earth's crust suggests that silica-carbon compounds containing sulfur, nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen may have been precursor even to the formation of large quantities of water. One would expect both a very active volcanism, a thick condensed and turbulent atmosphere that may have been very active in creating lightening storms on a regular basis, and possibly a continuous round of meteorites and comets showering the surface from crowded night-time skies. Solar radiation, perhaps more intense in some wavelengths and particle emissions that it is even today, must have played a critical role in this early phase of proto-biotic development. Thus, the atmosphere could not have been completely cloud covered with gases, but partly clear. These basic conditions have been replicated in the laboratory and have demonstrate the formation of a range of organic compounds that would be considered prerequisite to the formation of biological life-forms. Life on earth probably originated during one single period of time when the general conditions became most suitable for this kind of development to occur. The life that formed at this time was capable of surviving and proliferating in the world, via the waterways that were then established, and then became capable of rapidly adapting itself to a wide range of environments and changing climactic conditions. Eventually, the biosphere took shape and complexity to the point that itself produced a stabilizing influence on the bio-geophysical framework that supported life in the first-place, with the gradual emergence of oxygen in the atmosphere and the formation of an ozone layer sufficient enough to protect living systems that emerged from the water onto land. Photosynthesis by algae was an early adaptation, and this photosynthesis fueled the biosphere.

The object of biological systems theory therefore becomes the understanding of this sense of inherent, systematic order of living systems relating to their adaptive equilibrium and capacity to change rapidly to meet changing circumstances. We should expect, furthermore, that all living systems, whether terrestrial and earthbound, or hypothetically extraterrestrial and alien, must achieve a similar kind of systematic success in their adaptive organization if they are to survive and develop evolutionarily. From this we may state some initial propositions:

1. Living systems tend naturally toward evolutionary differentiation in order to achieve adaptive success to changing environments.

2. Living systems depend upon the interaction and maintenance of an effective meta-biotic context for their adaptive survival and reproductive success.

3. The metabiotic context for all living systems consists of a bio-geophysical substrate that is critically conditioned by co-evolutionary and eco-evolutionary relationships between differentiated organisms. Many of the changes that occur in this context are the consequence of the evolutionary differentiation of organisms

Therefore, it follows that the evolutionary differentiation of any living population of similar organisms and the metabiotic context that conditions the survival and success of these organisms are not only interconnected, but inextricably bound together as a complicated and interdependent, or what can be called a complementary system of relations. To specify causal arrows or primary determinants of such a system is to beg the question of the hen or the egg.

Biological systems theory tends to be concerned with answer certain kinds of questions of the natural world. For instance, the explanation of the stochastic origin of living systems from pre-biotic inorganic conditions is important to understanding how living systems that subsequently formed were organized and articulated in a larger geophysical setting. The problem of the extinction of species, and especially of mass extinction episodes, becomes important to explain as a critical outcome of the formation of a climax ecology and the oversaturation of the system by certain central biota. Similar, the question of the sustaining meta-biotic context for the shaping of living systems and the articulation of these systems in larger ecological frameworks becomes important. The question of the likelihood and existence of extra-terrestrial biotic systems, and the necessary prerequisites and predictable structures for these systems becomes important to answer as well. Understanding living systems from a synergistic and holistic point of view requires that we understand the emergence of superorganic properties of living systems at different levels, and the coordination of biological systems upon multiple levels of integration.

If we understand evolutionary speciation as a form of meta-biotic differentiation of an organism through success generations, or regenerations, and we can understand that, at the level of the multi-cellular eukaryotic organism, such reproduction is primarily social and sexual, entailing the exchange of genetic information between different but similar organisms, then we have set up a dynamic of population differentiation and the occurrence of a macro-biotic patterning of differentiation that incorporates the individual as the member of a larger group. So strong and critical are the ties of the individual to the group, that loss of an effective group context spells almost invariably the death of the individual. The cooperative achievement of such reproductive populations represents both an advance and at times a disadvantageous constraint over reproductive and adaptive possibilities of organisms, and is similar to the revolutionary achievement of multi-cellular organisms over singe-celled organisms. Individuals in groups yield something, but gain something back, and effectively interact and cooperate to create an entirely new level of metabiotic organization that did not previously exist before such social interaction took place. When we see extinctions upon the macrobiotic level, we are seeing the relationship and dependency of the individual organism upon the group in full swing--in fact, we see little significant evolutionary change nor significant extinction events associated with the speciation of prokaryotic and one-celled organisms. Group and social organization of living systems appears therefore to raise the stakes considerably of the evolutionary game--it involves both greater risks and greater rewards, and pushes the entire system to a new and higher level of organization and functioning.

Large groups as wholes are in the long run and in the large more resilient to normal and small fluctuations of meta-biotic pattern, but tend to be more susceptible to major changes and shifts of meta-biotic pattern, compared to individuals and less socially organized forms of life, that may be less flexible upon a local level of adaptation but demonstrate greater survivorship in times of greater environmental stress.

The natural tendency of groups is to expand beyond their adaptive limits, unless such expansion is counteracted by meta-biotic factors that serve to restrict or limit population growth. Therefore, in the evolutionary long run, it is likely that successful groups will expand beyond the carrying capacity of the larger region of their habitation, resulting either in the fragmentation of the population into sub-populations with a greater likelihood of competitive exclusion and phyletic differentiation of subgroups, or else the population as a whole must face the prospect of extinction.

The more dramatic and marked the environmental fluctuation, the more intense and extensive its effects, the greater the likelihood that populations, as coherent evolutionary species, will become doomed to rapid extinction. From the standpoint of meta-biotic systems, mass extinction events can only be reasonably explained by high levels of over-saturation of regional ecosystems coupled with extreme and unusual environmental fluctuations.

So far, in the natural history of life on earth, no mass extinction event has represented a total extinction event, though it is not unreasonable to speculate that life itself may have had several fitful starts and stops in the early phases of its development. A total extinction event would entail the loss of all life on earth as we know it. This is not an impossibility, but its likelihood does not seem to be great, because of the achieved diversity of the total global ecosystem. The number of mass extinction events that have been recorded in the fossil record indicate that the earth's environment may have periodically undergone major shifts or changes that affected the entire profile of life. It is probably impossible to say which of these major events was the greatest extinction event. It is probably also impossible to identify the total number of minor extinction events that have occurred in earth's biological history.

It is important to emphasize that from a meta-biotic standpoint, such extinction events are not primarily or exclusively explained by major environmental fluctuations alone. It is entirely possible that these fluctuations themselves may be in part due to the influence of living systems and their evolutionary trajectory, and that there may be inherent mechanisms of change and biotic reorganization of living systems which, under the correct conditions, can trigger extinction to occur upon a massive scale.

Understanding of extinction events is critical to a meta-biotic comprehension of living systems in a manner similar to how understanding and explaining cycles of economic depression are critical to the theoretical explanation of political-economic systems. This analogy is fitting because both cases are constrained and controlled at similar levels of complexity of interaction and relation that makes simple or straight-forward deterministic explanation impossible. The mechanism of mass extinction is diagnostic of the systemic relations of meta-biotic systems, and the explanation of these events can only be reasonably made at a meta-biotic level of understanding. Again, it is likely that unicellular organisms have remained for the most part resilient and largely immune to such large scale fluctuations of the meta-biotic system, though bacteria live and die daily in massive amounts. We can predict from such a general model that therefore the Giant Sequoias will eventually disappear from the earth, whether or not the hand of humans is involved in their destruction, and that the Giant Whales will also eventually pass in an evolutionary blink of an eye, while the organisms that thrive upon the decomposition of these giants will continue in a largely unaltered manner to feed upon their corpses. There is a critical meta-biotic reason for this difference, and this reason underlies the patterning of all forms of life as we know it.

The explanation of extinction therefore goes beyond conventional evolutionary theory that is focused upon speciation and implies extinction in the phrase "natural selection." At the same time, the understanding of the functioning and evolutionary development of metabiotic systems also comprehends more than merely the explanation of extinction from a theoretical point of view. If we see extinction events as expectable, if not predictable byproducts of larger cycles of development in natural, self-organized systems that tend toward complexity, then we can understand that a complete and comprehensive metabiotic understanding views extinction as but one possible outcome of many alternative pathways of development. It is an outcome, a consequence, of specific series of "events" that occur systematically throughout a large and complex system of biolotical relations, but it is never a fully determined outcome in the sense that other outcomes had some likelihood of occurrence. It is an outcome that eventually develops for all kinds of living organisms at all levels, but for a complex variety of different reasons, visits some kinds of organisms more frequently, or with greater likelihood, than other kinds of organisms. Hence, at this level, natural selection, especially as a form of extinction at the species level, can be said to be metabiotically governed by factors that may transcend and be beyond the control of the selection forces and adaptive capacities of any particular kind or coherent population of organisms. Conventional evolutionary theory construes selection as primarily operating upon the individual, and altering the profile of the population gene pool as the result of differential selection, both in terms of adaptive survival and in terms of reproductive success. But this kind of natural selection invariably becomes mixed with another form of natural selection that operates in the background of all organisms lives. It is a form of selection that comes in a variety of ways and can operate upon a variety of levels at the same time--either through the physical environment or in terms of eco-evolutionary relationships or inter-specific relationships with other organisms. It is impossible therefore to tell where and when one kind of selection leaves off and another kind takes over. Certainly an organism that is weakened by hunger is more susceptible to disease and illness, and an ill organism would be less responsive to its environment and therefore more prone to predation, and an organism that is marginalized or ostracized from its group context would be more prone to hunger in the first place. Death by disease is a form of selection that often is beyond the adaptive capacity of organisms to control, and can sweep through and decimate the ranks of an entire population in very short order. It is unknown if entire species have been lost due only to disease, but this represents a kind of selection that is not clearly accounted for by conventional evolutionary models. Thus, natural selection as a process governing biological evolution must be understood in terms of the true complexity and systematic order that it represents and involves. At any given time, selective factors compose matrices and regimes of interacting determinants that influence the evolutionary outcomes for a population or for any individual of a population. These multiple factors operate in correlation to one another to influence the chances, or the stochastic outcomes, governing the survival of any organism or any group of organisms. It is therefore to be asked if natural selection doesn't always tend to favor the "fittest" or simply the "luckiest" and if the latter is the case, then it is true that evolution is completely blind. There is some partial measure of biological determinism involved in the evolutionary development and differentiation of species, and therefore the best answer is somewhere between the two--fitness and fortune both play an important part in defining evolutionary outcomes and success. This partial determinism is complex and of a complementary form. It therefore admits of no primary determinants or key causes, but only of a range of interacting variables.

For the most part, organisms also carry forward in an evolutionarily blind manner. They cannot predict the outcomes of what it is they do, nor do any organisms, even human beings, exhibit that much long range planning or sense of calculation of factors and conditions of their environment for adopting the best strategy. Therefore, selection that occurs usually occurs in spite of, or at least without reference to, the intentions or drives of the individual organism, though it invariably affects the options and outcomes governing these behaviors. Certainly, the better adapted the organism, the better that organism is capable of managing most events possible in the framework of that organisms life-world. Most organisms have evolved sophisticated if instinctual mechanisms of defense against predation for instance, particular predation by certain "known" forms of animals. The introduction of a foreign predator therefore, whose behavior is not in sync to an established metabiotic system of relations, may have a very destructive effect upon that system, as the organisms of such a system will suddenly encounter a new agency of their environment that they are without defenses or ill-equipped to deal with. Such an introduction of an alien species may have a consequence of selective disequilibrium to the preexisting system in a manner very similar to a sudden climatological fluctuation or change of availability of a limiting resource, for instance water.

The likelihood is great that any alien organism intelligent and advanced enough in its civilization to contact and visit the earth will almost invariably result in the destruction and displacement of humankind as the top-organism, and, unless such a species has an especially benign and pacifistic bent, might well result in the replacement of humankind. Such an organism may have biotic requirements similar enough to mammalian or animal forms of life that it might in fact be able to freely adapt to the earth's environment, excepting the great likelihood of infectious diseases that could possibly prevent and destroy such a species.

But this likelihood appears in fact to be quite remote--a greater likelihood is the earth being struck once again by a very large comet or asteroid. Contact with an intelligent life form in the universe will most likely be by indirect communication, receiving remote electromagnetic signals that exhibit regular artificial patterns. These signals may be so remote that they may have come from a civilization that was long since vanished from their planet.

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In biological systems theory, I propose the early development of metaevolutionary systems that consisted of the replication, modification and transfer of genetic information in the form of RNA and DNA sequences within a self-organizing biotic context. From the beginning prebiological systems came to exert a critical influence upon their environments, an influence that can be defined ecologically, and that tended to shape and condition these environments in ways that became increasingly favorable to the evolution of biological systems. These processes certainly followed the central dogma of genetic information transmission that is universal to all known life forms, and this is the production of complex organic molecules, mainly in the form of proteins. Original protein structures that were the object of DNA production sequences were probably primitive and unelaborated structures, and the picture that exists is essentially of a kind of early proto-virus with a protein sheath that was capable of self-induced speciation under the correct extra-somatic conditions. Modification of genetic information in the original form was probably accidental and occurred with high frequency. In genetic transfer, forms of horizontal and diagonal gene transmission must be considered to have been critical to early evolutionary systems and formed the basis for the augmentation of genetic complements in living cells.

In this conceptioning of metabiotic systems, all living systems exhibit a potential for exponential growth within the appropriate sets of circumstances. What is contextually "appropriate" in any metabiotic context is biologically relative to the systems that are involved. On a larger scale, all evolutionary change exhibits as well a non-linear or logarithmic patterning of increasing rapidity of change under prevailing sets of circumstances. This model of "exponential evolution" therefore defines a central mechanism of what has been known as punctuated equilibrium in the evolution of species and phyla. Evolutionary rates, in other words, tend to be dynamic and variable for all species, even if rates of reproduction and rates of genetic change remain more or less the same over the long run for any given species. This tendency towards exponential growth and development is characteristic of all forms of life, and is a central characteristic of all biological life forms that we understand on earth. There are some species that appear to exist in an evolutionary plateau or steady state for the long term, with very little change in physical structure or characteristics for very long periods of time. On the other hand, when evolutionary transformations do begin to occur within a species or population, in the longer biological frame of reference they often appear to happen in an "over night" kind of rapidity.

Significant steps had to have taken place in the evolution of life, such as the emergence of the first true prokaryotic organisms with complete DNA machinery for replication, the development of eukaryotic organisms as complex structures, the emergence of multi-cellular eukaryotes, especially with specialized organic structures and tissues, and the increasing adaptation of these organisms to a growing range of environmental habitats.

The emergence of eukaryotic cells was possibly accomplished by the differentiation and amalgamation of prokaryotic-based structures. The development of archaeobacteria was a spin-off of the adaptation of prokaria in extreme environmental conditions that featured very high rates of selection and mutation. Original pre-biotic environments would by today's standards have been considered hostile to the survival and development of most life forms known today or that have existed during most of biological history on earth. From limited tide-pool type habitats that such early protokaryotic forms fostered suitable probiological environments. Within this system an early trophic order was also established between different kinds of bacteria, in which chemolithotrophs relied upon the catabolization of inorganic compounds and substances, and subsequent bacteria consumed bacteria. The environment of the rumen of an ungulate describes the protobiotic conditions that fostered the emergence of the first living systems. This early metabiotic system subsequently fostered coevolutionary counteradaptations, competition and biotic, density-dependent selection regimes that became the platform for all subequent evolutionary episodes in the history of life on earth. The rise of increasingly complex and differentiated multi-cellular systems was an logical outcome of this development.

Eco-evolutionary systems featured a pattern of exponential evolutionary growth and change that followed natural patterns of population growth and decline in nature. Evolutionary change tended to foreshadow the advent of rapid population growth periods and proliferation. This meant that periods of rapid evolutionary development would arise at non-linear rates, that evolutionary periods of change occurred in a logarithmic, nonlinear manner, and that it was always tracked by the successive rise and fall of new populations. There occurred an evolutionary succession of developmental types that tended to be complete with the rise of a climax eco-trophic pyramid.

Biological evolution must be understood from the standpoint of biological information processing that depends upon critical feedback loops to its environment. Such information process, rooted in the universal structure of DNA/RNA and in the dogma of their productive expression through the construction of amino acids and complex protein structures,

Genetically speaking, the basic differences between a human being and an amoeba may be in fact slight, compared to the similiarities of protein and underlying genetic structures that both kinds of organisms share in common. And yet from the standpoint of emergent properties this slight fraction of a difference may be all the difference in the world. It appears that there may be a typical fraction of the total genetic complement within which random drift and genetic variation make a critical difference in body structure and function and in the subsequent patterns of ecological adaptation that organisms are capable of achieving. If looked from a slightly different angle, the average base cell of the human body may not be so substantially different in structure and composition than the average amoeba, but the differences that do occur are enough to generate a composite structure of a human being or a colony of one celled organisms. These changes to the minimal fraction of genes, what I would call modulator genes, may have the consequence most felt in the developmental differentiation and specialization of cell tissue function in multi-cellular organisms. It is evident furthermore that evolution built upon these changes from the ground up, and gradually introduced refinements to the basal structure as if a pyramid. Each additional layer on the pyramid, being less than the basal structure beneath, confers upon the organism an entirely new suite of adaptive and morpho-physiological changes, and each additional layer has magnified consequences for the genetic arrangement and system as a whole, even if the actual genetic complement of that layer is less than the underlying layers, its consequences are much greater in proportion.

It follows then at the upper most levels, relatively slight modifications might result in relatively major transitions and changes for the lines of organisms. At the same time, it is considered that organisms ultimately had all more or less a common origin, and subsequently branched in ever further separations and differentiations down different alternative pathways each with its own developmental consequences. Some lines developed into plants, others in animals, and of the animal line some became insects and others mammals. We can refine this statement somewhat and say that for each clearly identifiable characteristic, or integrated set of characteristics, there was exactly one branching point and one overall line off conitinuous succession to the present. The solution of being a land mammal was not reached at multiple points of time by multiple branches, but the ancestors to all extant mammals was a single emergent line.

All extant organisms are of successful lines that can trace their origin to a single shared ancestor in biological time, and therefore all current biological lines can in the most basic sense, in terms of the base of the pyramid, can be said to be equally old.

There may be another principle operating in this consideration. Evolutionary rate of speciation is inversely proportional to the "size" or "scale" of the developmental pyramid of the organism in question. Put another way, it may require less overall genetic mutation to substantially alter the structure and composition of a highly evolved creature, but it may be slowed down compared to less complex organisms as the consequence of growth physiology, sexual reproduction, etc. Bacteria go hourly through massive bloom and doom cycles, and yet have evolved little from the first organisms. On the other hand, complex mammals or even plant species may be extremely slow to develop and reproduce, but represent the product of a long and convoluted evolutionary trail that witnessed many major genetic transformations of structure.

We might refer to this as a form of bio-ecological equilibrium that is built into the structure of all living systems at different levels of their articulation, and I believe there is a ready structural explanation for this. Multi-celled organisms that are highly differentiated in terms of their organismic structures and tissue substructures, are composed of cells that grow and die at regular rates, but the organism as a whole, and its consequent reproduction, is slowed down proportionate to the number of total cells involved in the total organism and the number of differentiated cell lines that make up that total. The potential exponential growth rates of these specialized cells is inherently constrained within this framework, and it is possible that tissue cells sacrifice their growth potential for metabolic potential that is associated with specialized tissue function. A line of cells in such tissue will only go through so many reproductive repetitions before the cell differentiates in its structure and function into two or more different lines. It is evident that in multicellular organisms the pattern of rapid initial growth, a long period of maturation, and eventual decline and death replicates the pattern of single cell growth and death cycle played out individually many times over.

It is evident that the genetic components that govern these particular processes in multicellular oganisms, and that are lacking in the single cell organisms, are those very building blocks upon which most of evolutionary development of life has been based. The number of these modulating components are very small compared to the total genetic complement of all living organisms, but they are enough to make all the difference in the world in terms of evolutionary outcomes.

It is clear that as life forms evolved and differentiated into an increasing variety of forms, so to did the fundamental ecological relationships that cohered between different forms of organisms that coexisted contemporaneously during any single epoch also evolved. We can speak of evolutionary ecology and ecological evolution in the sense not of the organisms adaptation to a changing environment, but of the adaptation of a living environment in response to changing organisms. And like the basic trait modifications that are used to classify and distinguish between different kinds of organism that are alleged to have emerged from a single progenitorial line as the result of divergent exclusive speciation, we may identify basic ecological relationships that cohere in the biosphere and that can be traced back to a single progenitorial framework from which all subsequent and indirectly related systems developed. The complementarity of plants and animals, for instance, must trace back to a single pattern of arrangement of organisms at a time long before there were any plants or animals as we know them or may have born any resemblance to what we know now as these basic kinds of organisms. The relationship in this case would have been one of photosynthesis and respiration and a dependency of one upon the other as a derivative form of energy and material for growth and reproduction, and there are correlates of these basic relationships in the single-celled and primitive multi-cellular world.

What complicates this picture is the observation in convergent evolutionary patterning in which similar kinds of trait complexes serving similar functional needs evolve at multiple points in time by multiple organisms, whenever such lines are confronted by the same or similar sets of evolutionary circumstances. Similarly, similar patterns or ecological relationships may recur through time and across space with fundamentally different sets or kinds of animals. It is when specific suites of traits that are linked to specific evolutionary adaptive relationships are in consideration that we may hypothesize a single set of origin events that are associated with that suite and associated relationships.

We must qualify this statement by distinguishing between what we can call horizontal or allopatric speciation on one hand, and vertical or sympatric speciation on the other hand, and also by distinguishing between development of what can be considered minor and derivative trait characteristics, in the case of the former allopatric speciation, and the development of major and basic trait characteristics in the case of the latter sympatric speciation.

If life arose 3.5 billion years ago as but prekaryotic entities, small proto-cells that had basic DNA to protein functions, we can still consider that life remains today rooted to the same foundations from which it arose, and that it cyclically returns to its source and source time and again even after its origin has forever changed. We find this origin in small primitive unicellular microbes that occupy a vast array of different habitats upon earth. We know that these organisms still derive their energy from the same kinds of sources from whence their original precursors first arose, albeit in different concentrations and sets of equilibria than today. There is a sense in this return of a grand connection of life, of an evolutionary process that, no matter how large and diverse it becomes, never leaves the substrate from which it originated. We can say metaphorically that life is continuously welling from the ground up in surge upon surge of new life forms that coalesce into complex community systems.

If we were to advance living systems, as evolutionary processes, beyond the gravitational hold of the earth's surfce, into outer space, then we would do well to bear this fundamental foundation and basis for life in mind. We would not want to transplant life as it exists upon earth into space expecting that it might have something to which it could root and renew itself as it does on earth. Even if we invent complex means of perpetuating life artificially in space, we still cannot say that we have created life in a manner that exists upon its own independent of its foundation on earth. We would want to see life in space follow the same means of upwelling and evolution that it is found to do on earth.

Life on earth can be said to have critically shaped the surface of the earth, and to have influenced its geophysical dynamics. It influenced the history of this planet and altered the course of its outcomes. It continues its shaping processes today, even in spite of and inclusive of humankind's own madly driven efforts towards global development.

We can refer to earth as constituting a metabiotic context for the development of life on earth, the formation of which was the result of the increasing evolutionary development of life.

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In keeping with natural systems theory, it can be said without hesitation that the design of life was completely chaotic and stochastic. It arose as the result of chance patterning in nature as the result of a set of extenuating environmental and developmental conditions, without a doubt very complex and stable, that permitted life to form in the first place. The only miracle of life was the winning of that Grand Lottery ticket that made the unique concatenation of events possible for the formation of life to begin and be sustained indefinitely.

It can clearly be said that once life originated and arose on earth, it came to have a permanent place as a part of that earth. At the same time, we can see that the integration of life follows rules of order and pattern that are so complex and sophisticated that they belie their blind beginnings as chance process and happenstances. Life manifests a sense of overall systemic integrity of both form and function that is represented by every aspect and living thing that ever existed upon the earth.

We really cannot separate any individual organism or even a population from this overall grand design of life--life continues as a single, more or less integrated system. We share the same molecules, processes and fate as the microorganisms from which we originally arose. To say that we are all interconnected in a metaphorical manner does not do justice to the sense of integration that exists upon a basic organic level of our being and our physical existence. Life on earth, as it occurs within the biospherre, represents a single integrated entity, a living system, that is made up of many many different parts. We can understand this holistic integration of life on earth if we see that the principles of its organization and stratification between subsystems serve to unite us together in webs of interdependencies that we cannot escape or forego. That is why, if we blast off into outerspace upon some distant voyage, we are destined to return to the same earth from which we came. If we see different kinds of animals, plants and other organisms, and the populations and communities that these comprise, as being but merely parts or pieces of a larger system of relationships and interactions, then we can see that, for life, the system as a corporate whole is greater than any of its parts, and that any of its parts are quite readily expendable, but the whole must carry forward regardless.

Small subsystems of life are quite ephemeral and transitory--they are quickly replaced and recycled. Even larger subsystems in time suffer the same fate, albeit by a much slower biological clock. Regardless of the subsystems that rise, fall and cycle again and again on earth, it is the living system as a whole, the biological metasystem, that continues to develop and evolve.

Death is one aspect of biological systems that is rarely treated directly as an important part of a larger cycle of life. The fact that all biological entities must be, as individual organisms, eventually recycled is something we take for granted and also fail to take into account. It is not only that decay following death returns the basic components of the larger system to the common pool from which they were derived, thereby replenishing this larger system. It is that the phenomenon of death is connected to the phenomenon of birth--systems cannot reproduce themselves anew if they cannot replace what is old and worn-out. By dying, all living organisms are acknowledging their place and purpose in the grand scheme of things on earth. They thereby play their part in the larger order. And yet as much as death surrounds us in life, life itself seems virtually unextinguishable. Even if we removed all the major multicellular forms of life on earth, we probably would only be creating a global ecological vacuum for the basic microbial forms of life to replenish, given enough time. We would be very hard pressed indeed to sterilize the entire planet of all living things, and we can say that in the final game, the microbe is king.

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I put forward the not uncontroversial proposition that evolution on earth has been generally progressive in the sense that it has led in the long run to the inauguration of functional designs that are increasingly sophisticated and complex, and that this aspect of its development is rooted in the logical outcomes of natural selection. It is not to claim that natural selection is not fundamentally blind, which it is, but that it invariably leads to outcomes, when coupled with the phenomena of living things to adaptive variation of form and function, that can be said to be developmentally progressive. We may see a form of this progressiveness of evolutionary development in the great number of morphological and functional convergences that can be described between unrelated species. Each species, in selective frameworks requiring similar kinds of adaptation to similar sets of factors, will arrive at similar kinds of solutions to the problems of adaptation, and these solutions will in general be streamlined to the problem at hand as being the optimal and best-fit solution to the problem. In this sense, life is generally problem solving, and it is the discrete and fairly continuous modification of traits, the general morphological and functional plasticities of living organisms within the parameters of their basic skeletal or structural framework, that makes this kind of problem solving possible, and this problem solving leads, logically and invariably as a function of time, to more general solutions.

The problems that life attempts to solve are the problems of adaptive survival to changing contexts, and reproductive growth. We may assign these problems as part of the biological imperative of all living things, and of the biological system as a whole. The entire process of evolutionary development and DNA transmission and modification has been in a sense a concerted, or at least a cumulative, attempt to solve this basic biological imperative. Living systems have an innate drive for adaptation and reproduction--they are blind in this drive and will invariably push themselves to extension if matters were left entirely on their own. The larger system of life has become a multi-phyletic system that has at is basis mutual symbiosis on the most basic level. The original proto-biotic conditions of the first living forms were by definition ecologically stratified and multi-phyletic, and this inherently variegated aspect of living systems goes back to its original prebiotic foundations. Though individual organisms and systems drive themselves to the edge of extension in following blindly their own imperative solutions, they participate in the dynamic equilibrium of the larger system, often perturbing it and restoring it to new levels along the way.

Evolution is progressive in the sense then that its basic mechanisms have been engaged in a kind of problem solving strategy and have endless opportunitities to achieve solutions. There is no sense of determinism or planning in this process--species rise and fall at their own levels, and seek only those kinds of minimal solutions that provide them with local and immediate success. There is no saying why one kind of species will arrive in a given context and not another, beyond the application of pure chance. It is therefore a kind of game that is played over and over again, each time it is repeated it leads to greater and greater changes in given directions. Evolution is progressive because, I believe for the following reasons:

1. It is exploratory of a complex landscape.

2. It follows lines of least resistance and greatest reward.

3. It naturally increases to fill any niche open to it.

4. The result of failure is negative selection, usually implying death.

5. The combination of relational patterns of interacting organisms in the long run creates frameworks of selection that tend to promote increasingly advanced designs.

6. Different evolutionary epochs represent ecological experiments the result of which is the rise of a certain order or regime of life dominated by certain key forms.

7. Extinction can be seen as the global result of the devolution of a system that renders the successful adaptations of key forms of a previous epoch relatively maladaptive.

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The basis of biological systems theory is the understanding of the stratification patterning of organic reproducing systems into microscopic, metascopic and macroscopic levels of analysis and synthesis. The interesting feature of these systems is that we can refer to organic organization, or rather the function of organisms, at each of these levels. A cell that is part of a tissue matrix of a larger multi-cellular organism is to be considered itself an organism, though it is dependent for its life-cycle upon the social organization of the cells of the matrix and it could not exist independently outside of this matrix even for a short time. This is a paradox, because an organism is on one hand a separate, reproducing entity, and yet on another is part of a larger community of similar organisms that collectively make up a large multi-cellular organism, and multi-cellular oganisms are organized behaviorally and ecologically in a larger biotic environment to constitute what can be referred to as a super-organic system.

Thus, at the microscopic level of life, we can distinguish the cellular function of basic organisms. I refer to this as the organismic level. Cellular organisms cohere into larger multi-cellular structures to form larger living forms, or what I refer to as organismic systems that occur at the metascopic level of observational analysis. Finally, organismic systems form complex populations and community structures with other multi-cellular systems, to create what can only be referred to as super-organic systems.

Integration of living systems can be best understood in these ways, and it is necessary to understand that integration proceeds upon each of the three levels simultaneously. Evolution and ecology can both be understood in terms of the multi-tiered integration and differentiation of such systems in reponse to fluctuations of the bio-geophysical substrate and of other living systems.

We assume that all life on earth originated from an original, pregenitorial ancestor that was a primitive form of prokaryote. Therefore all life is fundamentally related to the same sense of past and beginning, and no life occurs on earth that is entirely unrelated within the same evolutionary tree. If life had multiple genesis at different places and times, or if "cosmic seeds" were at some point introduced into the system, then the tree would in fact consist of two or more separate and separable taxonomic hierarchies as a result. It is for this reason that we can refer to all life on earth as representing only one biological Super-Kingdom, of which the five major Kingdoms of life are a part or what I would call an evolutionary empire. If we discover life on other planetary systems, then we will have to include classifications for multiple biological empires, and broaden our taxonomic hierarchies considerable to include multiple trees. Undoubtedly we would see both major structural similarities and differences between such systems.

If we accept the revised classification system based upon the known characteristics of unicellular life forms, then we can suppose that the domain is the most basic order of life that can be achieved in the universe, that subsumes kingdoms. We can impose a model of a superdomain upon this system, recognizing that all other domains than the one occurring on earth havenot been yet discovered. We can therefore hypothesize the following.

1. For each planetoid on which there is found to occur life in the universe, we can assume that there is likely only one domain represented by that planetoid, and the planetoid's name refers as well to the biological domain that would be harbored there.

2. If life appears to occur upon more than one planetoid, or in interplanetary space, then such a form of life would be characterized by the domain of the main planetoidal body that was the origin of the form of life in the first place, and we might refer to the larger circumference of that life-forms distribtion as its realm.

We can see that each domain of life is represented by a basic form and evolved set of elaborated forms that are unique in design. The basis for these differences will most likely occur in the differential patterns of organic molecules upon which the life form is based upon, particularly in terms of the organization of these molecules within cellular systems, the kinds of basic proteins that such systems are comprised of, possibly the structure and composition of DNA like strands that would be used in the informational transmission sequences, the relative size and shapes of different macro-molecultures, as well as both their internal and external organization within the cell. There are likely as well to be some amazing similarities and analogous convergences of both form and function, with form being determined in large measure by the optimal streamlining of mulitple function systems. The finished genotypical form of an organism is always:

1. A trade-off between a number of different kinds of adaptive mechanisms that have expression on several levels of biological integration simultaneously.

2. Represents a high genetic load of trait variability across a very broad spectrum of trait relations.

a. There is inherent variability of microscope trait expression and organization in all living organisms with only a few very noteworthy exceptions.

b. This trait variability is derived from the super-complexity of microscopic biological systems.

c. Genetic mutation occurs regularly and randomly with certain probabilities.

3. The result of selective modification of trait complexs towards some optimal functional solution.

From this kind of model, we can speculate on a general system like the following:

In the model presented above, we see a basic feedback between whole integrated systems and their external environments. Feedback either results in net gain which should become expressed either as reproductive maximization or elese optimization, while net loss should result in the disease and death of the organism, and for all dependent subcomponents of the system. Feedback affects the entire organism, though the actual process of trait modification and frequency change occur almost entirely at the microscopic and macromolecular levels. Trait variability occurs on the most basic biological levels, and resonates and amplifies up through the various levels of integration (1-5 in the diagram above) until it results in differential patterns of bio-behavioral performance in a larger biotic context.

With Kingdom Animalia, there is evident a third kind of control mechanism that becomes preeminent, and this is the response-recognition patterning of the complex, compound brain that serves to mediate relationships between an organism and its environment upon basic levels.

In general, it can be said that in functionally integrated systems that have a high degree of differential specialization of subcomponents, then the survival and existence of the subcomponents depends upon the survival and continuing existence of the whole. The subsystems are entirely dependent upon the larger system for their livelihood, or rather, upon the emergent, synergistic patterns that the subcomponents produce through their organization. We can represent life taxonomically according to the following kind of system of classification:

In this model, the number of Kingdoms represented by life forms that are current could range from the previously accepted five to many more than this, depending upon how we want to slice up the basic pie of life. There are fifteen major recognized groups of prokaryotic bacteria, three major Kingdoms of archaeo backteria, including Euryarchaeota, Crenarchaeota and Korarchaeota, and at least nine major groups of eukaryotic life forms excluding the Kingdoms of Plantae, Animalia, and Fungi. It also excludes two of the three major groups of algae, green and red algae, which appear to be more phylogenetically distant from brown algae. The Kingdom Algae therefore appears to be one that is broken into several different groups that are more distantly related to one another than they are to other groups of eukaryota.

It is evident that eukaryotic organisms arose as the result of internal symbiotic synthesis between two or more different forms of life together, which is a kind of pattern that does not fit the general evolutionary framework based upon continuous DNA transmission and modification. Prokaryotic forms may have become incorporated as symbionts into other cellular organisms, taking on special functions of mitochondria or else as chloroplasts. This occurrence gave rise to the genesis of eukaryotic organisms. Analogous forms of symbiosis can be found in the guts of ruminants. This suggests strongly the role of metabiosis in the functional ecology of living systems in influencing evolutionary development.

This model suggests that we are most likely to find life forms beyond the terrestrial system in the form of unicellular organisms. If multi-cellular organisms have arisen beyond the boundaries of the earth, then their basic cell structure may be fundamentally different than the eukaryotic cell structure that we find upon earth.

Metabiosis refers to the kind of biotic ecology and symbiosis that is induced when one or more forms of life, through their functioning, organization and ecology, create environmental surroundings that are suitable and beneficial for another form of life to develop within. A central contention is that almost from the beginning, a substantial proportion of living systems have been fundamentally metabiotic upon a microscopic level, and that in a strict sense, all multi-cellular organisms are in essence metabiotic communities of cells that are genetically united within a common system. The organism as a whole creates the metabiotic context for the colonies of cells that compose its tissue to adapt and survive. Metabiosis involves an intricate form of interdependency between individual units of organisms, or, in interspecific communities, between different populations and individuals of different populations. Most of life as it occurs on earth today, and as it has occurred on earth at least sense the Pre-Cambrian explosion, was metabiotic.

It is a contention of the hypothesis of metabiotics that living organisms have come to exert a critical influence upon the shaping of the geophysical environments and the establishment of equilibriums of major nutrient cycles on the earth. The biosphere constitutes an important layer of the earth's natural stratigraphy, and this biosphere has long played a part in conditioning the earth itself for supporting life.

The DNA transcription process is the universal code of life, and these result in the production of a very large array of complex proteinstructures occurring within cellular matrices that can be said to be the universal building blocks of all life. If we want to understand the basic structure of all living things, then we must understand the structural patterns of life upon these basic microscope levels. These basic molecular structures are found in all living forms, and their dynamics constitute the foundation for understand the patterning and behavior of all organic systems. It is likely that living systems outside of our terrestrial system may assume completely new shapes and forms based upon their essential amino acids that will be different than our own, and result in entirely different protein structures. Of course, many of the structual and basic mechanics of the two systems will be virtually the same or convergently similar.

It is difficult to think of a large Sequoia tree as a huge multi-cellular system that perpetuates itself through time and periodically regenerates and replicates itself as other individual organisms. These cells are differentiated in form and function based upon their specialization within the larger cell matrix of the giant tree, and these form various functions in coordination with one another to maintain the tree as a living organism. Similarly, when we think of a whale that sounds the depths of the ocean, we do not normally think of it as a vast complex of cells growing together in unison to compose a single organism. The behaviors we attribute to the whale, its whistles and clicks, its diving and breaching, its migration from north to south and back again, its social behavior and nurturance of its offspring. They are difficult to explain only in terms of the cellular components that make up the tissues of the whale. These behavioral traits that we may attribute to whales as inherent instinct are difficult to explain in terms of the analysis of the cellular systems that compose the whale and underlie its behavior.

Cellular, or microscopic ecology is a study of the processes of biological systems and their organization at a microscopic level. We cannot really understand macro-ecological systems until we can explain micro-ecology. The first cellular organisms arose in certain environments that was conducive to their survival and propagation. These conditions have been maintained, or even influenced, by life forms, and to a great extent life forms have evolved upon a cellular level in such a manner as to incorporate a protected cellular environment into a larger multi-cellular system. The result of this process is the ability for life forms to create their own internal environments, and internal ecologies, that are necessary for the survival of their cellular populations. At the same time, specialized functions must be developed, in terms of motility, response, recognition, etc., that allows these cellular organizations to effectively mediate with an external environment, and to achieve thereby a dynamic equilibrium between the external and internal world. The evolution of multi-cellular systems was largely the function of this kind of dynamic equilibrium established early on and perpetuated and elaborated into many different forms of life that we witness today.

If we confine ourselves strictly to the microbiological level of analysis of ecological and evolutionary processes, introducing larger level considerations only as control mechanisms in such systems, then it is possible to develop basic models of such processes that can be said to be true of a broad range of life in general. In general, we may say that all cellular life-forms require certain stable external conditions for their survival, metabolism, growth and reproduction. All cellular life forms will reproduce at basic rates, and the variation of these rates of reproduction for cellular forms are more or less equal. These rates, and metabolism and growth, will be influenced by the ambient temperature and the fluctuations and overall stability of this temperature through time. We may properly speak of micro-climates within which cell-growth and reproductive functioning is optimized.

From the standpoint of energy dynamics and rate laws affecting biochemical reactions and properties within cells and between cells, we can see all cells as representing heterogenous second-order systems that mediate boundary phase-transitions of basic molecules--internalized surface areas that are the product of reticulation and convolution of cellular membranes and structures is critical to the control of the rates of these reactions. The phase transitions possible within the context of a cell are gas to solid, liquid to gas, and liquid to solid type reactions. The common components of these reactions are the basic elements and compounds found in cell structures and molecules, and water. Most phase transitions therefore can be said to be mediated within the framework of water as both a solvent for solutions and as a substrate for the transport of more insoluble molecules. These reactions tend to be complex, relatively fast and recurrent, and continuous through the life of the cell. The cell does not normally appear to shut down for a long period of dormancy or inactivity.

Most cells as they have evolved, depend upon the critical presence of other kinds of cells for their survival. Most cells can be said to be metabiotically interdependent. Only some of the most basic forms of life, prokaryotic bacteria, can be said to exist in a form that is relatively independent of the presence of other forms of life.

1. These forms have evolved basic means of independent locomotion to enable them to carry themselves to environments that are suitable for their functioning and survival, or else they rely upon physical forces for their transport.

2. In the absence or loss of suitable growing conditions, these kinds of organisms may otherwise become dormant and form spores that allow them to survive for very long periods of time until conditions arise that trigger their release and allow their growth to continue. This period of reactivation can be fairly rapid.

3. These organisms have a well defined cell-wall that serves to protect them their external environment and to mediate relationships with their environment.

4. Though many of these organisms may be parasitic or symbiotic with other forms of life, many of them are capable of extended growth under fairly abiotic conditions as long as these conditions provide the necessary physical factors for this growth to occur.

All other derivative forms of life have evolved in such a manner as to be dependent in one way or another upon other forms of life for their growth and survival, either in a directly mutualistic manner, or else indirectly through participation in a metabiotic system that fosters a shared bio-geophysical context suitable to life. Under such metabiotic conditions, we would expect that all forms of life would exhibit the following bio-physical characteristics:

1. The ability to be transported to favorable locations or away from unfavorable locations, either actively or passively by means of physical transport mechanisms.

2. The ability to either maintain internalized conditions in metabiotic contexts that achieve a degree of dynamic equilibrium with the environment in terms of heat and nutrients, inspite of external fluctuations of these conditions, or else a derivative capacity to limit functioning during periods that are beyond the optimal range of functioning.

If these biotically dependent organisms cannot achieve either of these functions independently, then they must be achieved in mutual relation with other organisms. They must achieve a degree of cooperative organization and functional interdependency that allows the cells to provide a common context for the survival of all the cells together.

All unicellular organisms will reproduce at a set rate, and will automatically follow a principle of reproductive maximization under favorable conditions. Cellular forms of life will follow, under optimal conditions, standard rates of reproductive activity. Cell longevity will tend to be an average function of regular cellular regeneration and replacement.

It appears that cellular systems, in metabiotic contexts in which their reproductive potential is constrained by requirements of metabiotic survival, will not be expected to undergo a process of reproductive maximization as would be expected of independent unicellular forms. Their relative specialization of function would result in the creation of external equilibrium conditions that would entail an sub-optimum reproductive rate. This is perhaps in part accounted for in terms of the basic differences between prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms, and especially in terms of the nuclear DNA sequestration that occurs with the eukaryotic as opposed to that of the prokaryote. In general, eukaryotic cells are larger and more internally differentiated that the prokaryotes. Within such an arrangement, cellular replication and division can be regulated by other mechanisms that occur within the cellular environment. Just as such cells are capable of regulating their rates of reproductive development within the metabiotic context of other cells, they are capable of yielding this reproductive capacity over completely and to only carry out simple cell division through mitosis without conjugation. Such cells, within a more complex biological program, are also capable of developmental differentiation through an extended life cycle of the larger organism, during which cells will divide and grow into different shapes, forms and functions. Such cells accomplish this process that represents a kind of encapsulated evolution--the capacity of the cell to divide into functionally different kinds of cells in the metabiotic context of the host organism.

We may speculate on some of the following principles:

1. Cells requiring greater metabiotic functions of specialization generally tend to have more DNA to record and translate these structures.

2. Cells having longer and more DNA sequences will tend to divide or reproduce at slower rates, because transcription processes for long DNA sequences take longer to transcribe.

We may add one more kind of observation:

On a microscopic scale of measurement, relatively small and discrete differences in intial states can lead to major differences in outcomes.

Some DNA structures may be repeat, or "back-up code."

Some DNA structures may be archaic survivors that are neutral.

Some DNA structures may be "critical," others intermediate, and the remainder epigenetic in terms of their outcomes and effects.

Thus, genetic modifications that affect repeated or archaic structures may have no consequences for the organism beyond possibly the increase in genetic load or the gradual erosion of any built-in evolutionary inertia in such systems.

Furthermore, it is possible as well that some DNA may be active, or dominant, and other may be passive or recessive. Alterations that occur to active or dominant DNA structures may grossly affect the final outcomes, or else cause otherwise passive or recessive DNA to become more manifest and pronounced. It is possible that DNA may be variously switched on or off depending on the type of alteration to the coding sequence.

It is evident from the observation of evolving traits of organisms that such evoltion tends to be trait specific, relatively continuous, and to exhibit a differential in terms of the relative plasticity to those that appear to be evolving rapidly, hypothetically as the result of differential selective pressures, and those other trait complexes that appear to be stable and non-evolutionary. Whatever conditions, for instance, that favored the development of larger and larger brains in the hominid line, these conditions must have been long-term and relatively stable over time, and it is apparent that it resulted in relatively greater plasticity of the hominid brain or related traits, for instance nerve structures and cranial and other related structures, such as the face, compared to other anatomical features such as the big toe or the ball of the foot.

Therefore, though rates of genetic mutation or transcription error may be relatively low, comparatively minor alterations can result in major variations of pattern at higher levels. These outcomes would tend to be chaotic in their patterning.

Upon the microscopic level, trait variation will be expressed in terms that tend to be trait specific to the form, type, size, shape, and function of the tissue structure that is involved.

Upon a metascopic level of the organism, trait variation will tend to include both specific trait variations (eye color, hair follicle shape, etc.) as well as general variation of forms and features.

The cell contains the entire DNA code for the entire mature organism. It is clear that any particular cell, at any stage of the growth and development of this organism, will use only a portion of this DNA code for its transcription, and this may be regulated in a number of ways--the presence of regulator DNA that switches some on and off in different schedules; the presence of a regulator DNA that encodes all the different developmental pathways that cells may take in the functional development of an organism; the relative presence or absence of similar or different cells in a sub-metabiotic context that provides the conditions for the signaling and further differentiation of cells. There would be some terminal path-end, at which point the cell would stop dividing and differentiating, and assume a function of simple growth and replacement.

One must entertain the challenge of being able to write a single kind of equation that would, in its chaotic reiteration, result in the development of a differentiated organism in a predictable manner. There may be no single equation, but a set of interrelated equations, that accomplish such a function. In this manner, how is it possible that DNA might function in a manner that is programmable, and in a manner that may exhibit some form of fundamental organic intelligence in terms of the processing of complex information as a kind of biological algorithm or complex function.

To some unknown extent, external prevailing conditions in the metabiotic environment may serve to regulate such patterns of growth and development as well. Intercellular commication or other forms of interaction may provide necessary components in the overall direction and control of such developmental differentiation.

To the extent that there is inherent structural variability and flexibility in the encoding and transmission process, and to the extent that a cellular system can be said to be underdetermined, then the final outcomes of expression will be a function of phenotypic influence by the environment upon the system as a whole. Phenotypic flexibility can combine with genetic plasiticity of trait-complexes, to produce rapid rates or variable of evolutionary transformation of structure. Phenotypic flexibility and genetic plasticity can result in a kind of feedback system that favors differential trait selection. Phenotypic flexibility of the expression of a trait complex would result in differential selective pressures and adaptive functioning of different organisms.

We see phenotypic flexibility in the ontogenetic development of many organisms--many derivative structures and patterns of organisms are unique to that organism.

We see genotypic plasticity in conditions where adaptive-selective pressures favor certain features, characteristics or trait complexes in differential rates that are fairly discrete or continuous. If it is Darwin's finches--it may be in terms of fairly discrete differences of beak shape and size, or in terms of overall size of the individual bird, or in terms of a preference to sit in trees or stay on the ground, etc.

Genotypical plasticity may itself be variable in an evolutionary or ecological context--shifting or shutting down under circumstances that favor other kinds of complex adjustments and adaptations. Many traits demonstrate a kind of evolutionary equilibrium and do not appear to quickly modify themselves. Human brains may have changed dramatically over the last two million years, but human dentition and human legs may have remained relatively unaltered by comparison.

Any cell therefore may undergo evolutionary development. The whole of evolution was basically cellular evolution that was continuous from the first proto-karyotic cells until now. All life is cellular, and upon a basic cellular level, all life forms are interrelated. The cellular differences between organisms and organic structures are the most basic and greatest differences that exist in life. Evolutionary development of any cell involves a simple process of selection and reproduction of the cell, and its differentiation of DNA-RNA determined trait function and expression from one generation to the next.

We may distinguish between intergenerational DNA differentiation that is controlled, presumably either self-controlled within the DNA (possibly cell life cycle) or controlled by other DNA (possible ontogenetic development) and DNA differentiation that is random and uncontrolled, or at least stochastically influenced by external environmental factors. Both kinds of DNA differentiation may be occurring at the same time.

No two cells are exactly alike unless they are cancerous clone cells, either in form or function, or in terms of their exact DNA structures. The intergenerational difference between any two successive cells may be only slight, but it may lead to substantial differences of structure and function in subsequent generations, over just just a few generations.

If cells replicate every hour, on average, and life is estimated to be 3.5 billion years old, then we can estimate that since life began, there would have occurred more than 30, 660,000,000,000 cellular generations, during which time all the life as we know it and as it has occurred in the natural history record evolved. If we assigned a simple doubling time to the first organism, over generations, then we can speculate that there would have occurred a potential for a vast number of cells to have been formed (2^{30, 660,000,000,000}).

If we see evolution occurring on an hourly schedule, rather than by the year or the century, the we can imagine that speciation may arise, under the right circumstances, as a function of days and months, rather than in terms of years and decades. Depending on the form of life we are dealing with, trait variation or its expression at least, may be delayed a very long time. We are talking about the exponential evolution of trait variation pattern at the cellular level.

The natural history record proceeded in the beginning upon a long and low curved runway. For the first billion years, life was mostly constituted by rather simple forms of bacteria in interaction. How far these spread over the world is unknown--it is possible that they effectively spread via the oceans and even air transport to most surfaces of the range known now as the biosphere.

It appears that a major achievement was the rise of eukaryotic organisms with highly differentiated and compartmentalized internal structures, and many of these internal structures appear to have been based upon the incorporation of a cell by another cell, and either the transgenic or epigenetic transmission of new DNA information to the larger cell. The second step in this process was the deep invagination of the cell, possibly occurring at the same time as the penetration by a mitochondria or a cholorplast-type prokaryote, which led to the development of reticulated structures and the formation of a nulcear membrane within the cell. Early selection must have favored these secondary processes, as any deep invagination that is the result only of epigenetic information would be unlikely to be replicated by cell reproduction. This poses an inherent dilemma, as it is difficult to simply explain many of the fundamental cell structures and functions merely by the invocation of DNA mutation, which process appears to be rather conservative and infrequent. It may also be the case that early protokaryotic cells lacked some of the backup mechanisms found in cells today that enabled DNA transcription to proceed without error--thus error rates for early cells may have been quite large. It is evident while most such errors would have resulted in cell death, a small percentage of the total mutations would have exerted a tremendous adaptive influence upon the first evolutionary stages of life. In such a context, every next cell was the potential progenitor of an entire Kingdom or phylum of life, and while cells eventually differentiated into distinct colony and family lines, a few such cells actually accomplished such success, perhaps against all odds. In this regard especially we must recognize that DNA as a molecule, and the entire transcription process of DNA to RNA to proteins, evolved also as a function of time. The protopathways that formed the basis for these later developments did not arrive on the scene full-blown.

Thus, the first successful propagation of fully or partially eukaryotic lines, and their subsequent evolutionary development into more variegated and integrated structures, permitted the rise of multi-cellular organisms and many other associated features and properties, one consequence of which was the explosion of the diversity of life in all the major phylum still recognized today, less a few lost lines. This pattern exhibits the exponential character of evolutionary development, and of all living systems in general that have a fundamental doubling time at some relatively constant rate.

We can only imagine the earlies proto-karyotic biosphere and its environmental ecology that enabled certain colonies and communities of these unicellular organisms to achieve long term equilibrium and the leap to proto-eukaryotic structures. Even after mass extinctions, what is recognizable is a long lag time, a period of delay, after which new life forms suddenly reemerge in yet another biological explosion of growth and development.

We may state a basic principle of evolutionary development. For each evolutionary epoch that is marked at the culmination by a major extinction event, each epoch was ecologically dominated by the most advanced and differentiated life-forms that were then extant. The most evolutionarily advanced would be marked by the most differentiated biological structures, and would be the basis for an epochal exponential bloom of life.

Overall, upon a cellular level, the conventional evolutionary model is stabilized by the conservative character of DNA reduplication. Subsequent processes of RNA transmission and transcription into complex protein structures are more inherently error-prone and hence variable than initial DNA replication, but these in general are not held to have any kind of evolutionary consequence except in directly by influencing the outcomes of natural selection for or against the cell. In other words, such post-DNA transcription errors would be a major source of genotypic variability and phenotypic plasticity of all living forms, but by itself it would not alter the basic DNA coding sequence to influence subsequent generations of the same cell line.

The inherent accuracy and conservativeness of DNA transcription is in the conventional model regarded as the backbone for all evolutionary events. Variation is tolerated in RNA transcription, because it is evolutionarily inconsequential except in a negative sense of selection. But the question must be asked, in the evolution of living organisms, if living systems did not have some alternative means of achieving adaptive genetic variation more rapidly and more dramatically than what we have witnessed.

Presumably, most post-DNA transcription errors would be either negative or neutral in effect, leading to loss of the cell.

A case for indirect feedback can be made that positively selected alterations of post DNA coding errors might lead to a selective or stochastic advantage for these errors being repeated in subsequent generations, if alternatives are selectively eliminated and the DNA structures originally giving rise to these variations were positively influenced to reproduce at more rapid rates. Furthermore, selective advantage favoring a particular trait or phenotypical profile would possibly create an evolutionary framework encouraging greater selection for the trait complex thus expressed.

Only one mechanism that is suggested in this, but has not yet been documented and that goes against the fundamental tenant of the blindness of evolutionary process, is if there occurs any degree of feedback between protein and RNA encoded sequences and the original DNA that gives rise to these RNA. This may only be possible if RNA fragments might become spliced into, or somehow back-translate, to DNA sequences. So far, DNA to RNA to Protein transcription appears non-reciprocal.

Several alternative processes might be invoked to explain radical reassembly or change of genotype in cell lines:

1. Transgenic insertion of alien DNA from a virus or bacterial infection: tranduction and transfection; plasmic conjugation

2. Reduplication of extra chromosomal complements, and the reorganization of these complements into new and active strands of DNA.

3. Accumulation of excess DNA material within the chromasomes.

5. Rearrangement of the same DNA sequencies into sub-sequences differently organized: i.e. transposition and recombination

6. Epigenetic transmission of information and or material structures, and the incorporation of such information or substance: transformation

Furthermore, proofreading mechanisms on a cell may not be correctly proof-read, at least in precursor structures, and may permit some inherent variability in the correction process itself. Such a mechanism would open up the process of DNA replication to much greater rates and degrees of variability than are otherwise permitted under the conventional model.

Each or all or any combination of these processes may have been involved in one way or another, at one stage or another, in the evolutionary development of living forms. There are evolutionary phenomena at the molecular level that require sufficient explanation. These are the incorporation of mitochondria/cholorplasts into larger cell structures; formation of the nuclei and related reticulated structures; the rise of excessive and discrete chromasomal complements in cell progeny.

We may distinguish possibly between old DNA and new DNA, from an evolutionary standpoint, and active DNA and inactive DNA, that may remain for the most part unexpressed in the organism that contains it. We might also distinguish what can be called as "basic DNA" that encodes those common structures shared by many organisms, or even universally, from "derivative DNA" that is a function of many episodes of evolutionary events, and that gets added to or inbetween the basic DNA complexes. We may speculate that derivative DNA is added on top of or inbetween basic, older DNA, possibly overpowering or swamping the expression of the older DNA, a form of cellular character displacement. We may also say, from observations of the natural history record, that older DNA may be less active or pronounced than the newer DNA that comes to take its place. It is evident that much primitive DNA is shared by many very different forms of life, which often gains expression in vestigial or ephemeral traits during early developmental periods, leading into the development of greater trait differentiation during later fetal or neonatal development. We may say that newer DNA may be more degenerate than older DNA, which may be more regenerate and more highly conserved.

In a logical sense, if all of life is descended from a universal common ancestor, then a part of this ancestor's genetic code and the substances it encodes may well remain within ourselves upon a fundamental level. This would be found in every cell as perhaps the substrate of codon pairs in one or more basic chromosomes that would be more representative of most creatures on earth today.

If all basic forms of eukaryotic phylogeny developed from a single period following the organization and formation of eukaryotes, then the precursor structures typical of these different phylogeny, particular between trophic levels such as producers, consumers and decomposers, must have been expressed in the variation of the proto-eukaryotic populations and in their subsequent ecological community organization, even upon a unicellular level long before the emergence of large and differentiated mult-cellulared organisms upon the planet. We can imagine in this proto-eukaryotic phase an ecological differentiation of function by different varieties of cells.

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The basis of exponential evolution is the observation of the stability of a unimodal exponential growth curve of all living organisms. This pattern can be found in prokaryotic bacteria and free living eukaryotic forms, and it recurs at all levels of biological organization in multi-cellular lines, with the cloning functions of tissue cells traded-off for the survival of the organism as a whole. In a true analytical sense, multi-cellular organisms are nothing but a complex bundle of differentiated and specialized clone cells that have traded off their reproductive function for survival and growth of the organism as a whole, and entire populations of these multi-cellular organisms create larger evolutionary populations and breeding lines. Mechanical functions of cells becomes specialized and organized to the purposes of the systemic function of the organism of which they are a part, including such complex patterns as locomotion, environmental sensation and response, complicated neural networks leading to complex information processing, food getting and food-selecting behavior, etc.

At any level of biological organization, it can be said that the pattern for population growth under favorable conditions will proceed exponentially at rates of generation time roughly proportional to the size of the organism, until that population achieves the maximum limits of its environmental carrying capacity. During this phase of exponential increase, it can be said as well that the degree of heterogenic, mutagenic and transgenic diversity will increase and be augmented to a maximum level. This can be referred to as the pre-selectional phase during which positive selectional factors relating to niche expansion and adaptation are more favorable than negative selection factors. The growth curve will taper off in a stationary phase which may be continued indefinitely if equilibrium of environmental adaptation can be achieved. This phase can be referred to as the medial-selectional phase during which both positiveand negative selection factors may be operating in some kind of complex dynamic equilibrium. Eventually, changing environmental conditions will result in the increase in the rates of death of the population such that rates of death will outpace rates of reproduction. This can be referred to as the post-selectional phase during which negative selection increases far above positive selection factors. Genetic diversity of a population will be bottleneccked during this phase, and, depending upon the predominating direction and types of selection occurring, certain specific phenotypic variants will be positively selected. At the point of lowest ebb of the population, at a point of greatest genetic bottleneck, which phase can also be prolonged indefinitely under some circumstances, the possibility of both extinction and of speciation becomes greatest. It can be said that in periods of bottleneck, rates of speciation from an evolutionary frame of reference are accelerated through the drastic reduction of variants. As a consequence, there occurs a niche vacuum, which may be either broad spectrumed or narrowly focused, within which there occurs ecological opportunity for new variants to adapt and achieve renewed population growth.

In exponential evolution, the structure of this cyclical pattern of growth, development, stasis, decline and bottleneck are repeated over and over again. Each time the genetic constitution of the surviving populations being affected by such development becomes reshuffled and reorganized in new phenotypic patterns and genotypic templates. This patterning occurs at all levels of biological organization, and always occurs as well within a larger metabiotic context in which there can be said to be some kind of complex, dynamic equilibrium. What we get is a pattern of dynamic mosaic organization and succession of species in complex variegated biotic communities.

The general picture of evolutinary development is that it proceeds in a step wise fashion, in a complex form of punctuated equilibrium during which phases of one kind of genetic diversification through population increase and exchange, is followed by other kinds of phases during which different selection regimes are operating upon a particular population. It is at the time when populations are declining that the likelihood of speciation becomes the greatest through bottleneck and subsequent founder effects. The likelihood of extinction can also be greatest at this phase. This brings to mind a picture of all populations of living organisms occupying some position along their own evolutionary curves, during which certain predictable kinds of outcomes may be determined for the group as a whole. These outcomes would dominate the lives of the individual members of the population as basic operating constraints. We may make the following kinds of observations:

1. Very small single celled organisms have very rapid and short-lived cycles and therefore depend upon mechanisms of rapid evolutionary development through short term ecological adaptation and global or regional distribution.

2. Very large multi-cellular organisms tend on average to have very slow and long-lived cycles, and therefore depend upon mechanisms of gradual evolutionary development through long term ecological adaptation and local distribution.

All living systems upon a cellular can be shown to proceed in biological growth and development in an exponential manner, until some upper limit eventually is reached by the cell growth, after which an extended stationary period follows, during which cell growth is in equilibrium with cell death, and at the final phase, cell death due to endo-proteolytic functions takes over. Multicellular organisms follow a very similar pattern of development.

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It is evident that cells for instance have a number of genetic mechanisms of exchange and change available and that not all of these mechanism are bound by genomic reproduction and transmission. Cytoplasmic DNA may be replicated and transmitted outside of the cells nucleus. Various plasmids, mitochondria and ribosomes may contain DNA or RNA that functionally coexist outside of the nucleus and that may have a part to play in genetic development and evolution. Transgenic elements, particularly viruses, which are known to occur in all forms of living cells, and operate completely outside of the reproductive framework, also may have had an important influence in genetic development and evolution upon a cellular level. They appear to be able to confer upon cells certain adaptive properties during the cells lifetime, suggesting that organisms as a whole, and populations, may be genetically and phenotypically modified by these forms of extra-reproductive mechanisms. Phenotypic changes of multicellular organisms would not affect the reproductive genotype of these species unless the reproductive cells themselves became transinfected by extraneous DNA, but it does provide an environmental window for genotypic-phenotypic modification of post-reproductive organisms in a manner that can critically influence their survival. Furthermore, it is apparent that single celled organisms are not bound in this same way, and may acquire environmentally traits that can be readily passed on to subsequent generations as a normal functional part of their genetic machinery. The question naturally arises as to intermediate levels of organization occuring between single celled and multi-cellular organisms at which levels some kinds of process of environmental transgenesis may be occurring leading to evolutionary development.

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Evolution upon a microscopic level proceeds exponentially. This exponential function is not just the result of r-selected forms of life that multiple quickly under suitable conditions. It is the result of relatively rapid doubling rates for uni-cellular organisms, and the capacity for such organisms therefore to quickly extend desirable genetic mutations through a population within a few generational periods. Rapid and sweeping trait-modifications can potentially occur within a short period of time within the exceptional circumstances, while gradual trait modification would be the normal rule under usual circumstances.

The consideration of exponential evolutionary trends is based upon certain speculations about cellular structure and DNA structure in organisms over evolutionary time. If we observe trends of phyletic size increase and phyletic increase in differentiation and specialization of trait functions, then we must speculate about how this is reflected in terms of the DNA structure, composition and arrangement. We may speculate on the following kinds of hypotheticals:

1. In general, in evolutionary time, there is expected to be an increase in length of Chromosomal DNA segments that is reflective of phyletic size increase.

2. In general, in evolutionary time, there is expected to be an increase in the number of Chromosomal DNA segments that is reflective of phyletic increase in differentiation of trait function.

If this general model holds true, it can be expected for instance that mammals have on average more chromosomes than plants or reptiles, and that fish will have more chromosomes than algae. In all these instances, we are refering to eukaryotic cells where the chromosomal content is isolated in the nucleus in a form, exists in a haploidal DNA form, and where its transcription processes may be regulated and punctuated by one or more controls within the cell itself. What I wish to describe by this means in terms of evolution, is not the mere genetic mutation of chains, but the actual addition new genetic material to old chains. This appears to be a process that has been consistent with phyletic differentiation of species. The addition of new genetic material to a chromosome, or even of entire chromosomes to a nuclear structure, has not yet been described as a major contributory factor of evolutionary development, and how this may happen exactly remains a mystery. There are possible several alternative mechanisms for such increase in size and number of chromosomes:

1. Errors in normal transcription processes may result in added sequences to a chain, or else in the addition of multiple segments or chains as a whole.

2. Introduction of extraneous DNA material by some mechanism, as for instance by viral infection, or by symbiotic incorporation, such as may occur with primitive organisms, or that may occur in instances of sexual reproduction.

3. Addition or modification of RNA transcription chains that intermediate between successive DNA chains that may result in alternation of the final DNA coding sequence.

4. Point mutations in DNA or RNA sequences may result in repeat or repair structures being added to the DNA or RNA chain, with the result that point mutations may "drift" in their effect upon the genetic outcomes overall.

It may be that the structure of genetic encoding encourages repeat structures or sequences as a means of providing backup reliability in information transmission processes. It is possible that what emerged as a design to protect against errors or random point mutations, may have resulted in an accelerative trend in evolutionary development of organisms in the first place.

It is apparent at the same time that many organisms may be carrying around more than a full complement of chromosomes, and that these chromosomes carry far more information than is actually necessary for the completion of the life-cycle of a single organism. Therefore, increase in size and amount of DNA over time, a process that cannot be accounted for by mutation alone, implies as well the likely accumulation of excess genetic material and hence a heavier genetic load than otherwise thought possible. It may be that relatively K-selected species in fact tend to carry a heavier than average chromosomal load, reducing the rates of transcription and transmission respectively.

It is apparent that life may have evolved on basic levels the tendency to accumulate and gradually add to the DNA sequences that are the common thread of all life, but they did not evolve a complementary method for excising or removing excessive chains or segments from the system. It may be a kind of system that is so complex in terms of its interconnections, that an addition to a chain may or may not be deleterious or beneficial, but the removal of a segment would almost always assure a destructive or deleterious consequence to the cell or organism as a whole.

It is also possible that some species may develop to a relatively high level of population saturation and increased K, and then back down the evolutionary period to a smaller size and more basic sense of production. Under such circumstances it would be expected that some genetic material that was once active and vital may suddenly become inactive and excessive. This excess code may not be excised away, but may only become deactivated and made dormant. We can expect therefore an gradual accumulation of archaic DNA structures, which structures may relate us as human beings back to the age of the Dinosaurs and before. We might see the role then of basic DNA structures that are shared between phylogenetically different organisms, on top of which are built different derivative sequences. Vestigial traits emerging and disappearing during ontogenetic development may be a reflection of such archaic DNA structures with a temporary influence upon the organism.

Such an accumulation of genetic material may result as well in the accumulation of "bad" DNA or dysfunctional sequences. In time, such accumulation may have negative effects upon trait development of organisms, and may even underlie the occurrence of sudden extinction of species in the fossil record.

Another aspect of DNA structures is the built in presumption of a one-gene/one-trait correspondence, and a potential ignorance of the complexity of DNA informational processing in which different DNA sequences may be interlinked though not proximate at the same place or position within a larger strand. This may be especially true in multi-chromosomal structures, in which there is possible some kind of inter-DNA communication occurring, presumably in the form of a specialized RNA.

Clearly, account has not been fully taken of the addition of DNA strings and sequences to the normal complement of cells, and it is apparent that this increase in number, size and complexity of such sequences may have been the basis for evolutionary differentiation in life. Such addition must have been gradual and rather slow in occurrence. Addition of DNA to the normal complement of a species would result in fundamental and radically pronounce acquisition of new trait patterns over time.

The line drawn in the normal definition of species, that of reproductive success, may in some hybrid cases be blurred a little bit, if differences between mating pairs occur at a sub-species or even in a broader level. It is possible that, in closely related species or highly differentiated sub-species, that occassional interbreeding may result in the formation of entirely new species, on in a process that can be referred to as evolutionary amalgamation leading to the emergence of a new type. Distance in this case may be a matter of heterogeneous trait expression, as is commonly experienced. On the other hand, there are also numerous examples of cases of prolonged in-breeding and the bottlenecking of populations to rather narrow margins of genetic variability. In such cases, the tendency for the expression of deleterious traits becomes marked, and the tendency for genetic maladaptability to changing environmental circumstances is also pronounced. Cases also appear of prolonged functional inbreeding as the result of small sizes of isolated populations or of functional sexual segregation in highly competitive environments, with similar kinds of results that can be expected. This kind of development may be expected for instance of highly K-selected creatures who have come to define for themselves very narrow and highly specialized niches and territories. In such circumstances the capacity for mating and mate choice may be narrowed so much that genetic variability over successive generations may be reduced. In such circumstances, high equilibrium would entail a sense of long-term stability that would be conducive to intergenerational patterns of breeding.

The picture that is being painted in terms that I refer to as exponential evolution is that though the total genetic informational complement for an organism may have a fairly broad base, the margin for expression and continuity of a genetic type may be in the long run quite narrow, such that it can tend toward rapid phyletic differentiation in adaptation, or possibly towards sudden and deleterious expression of mutations and defects that are normally kept silent. Creatures may exhibit in this regard fairly robust and broad-based adaptations, but there is a limit either in terms of adaptability or dysfunction beyond which the entire genetic system of a population may loose its equilibrium and fall into a condition of general disequilibrium.

To expound a basic set of postulates for exponential evolution, we may make the following statements:

1. Phyletic increase in size and differentiation of function is reflective of the increase in size and number of DNA sequences involved in the transmission processes of a kind of organism.

2. Increase in number of DNA must therefore be a major factor in evolutionary differentiation and development of species, as both a compensatory factor for the random rise of deleterious sequences and DNA, and as just a normal process of increasing genetic load.

3. Addition of genetic material may be both deleterious and beneficial, and is usually deleterious in the long run.

4. Genetic encoding becomes more complex in terms of its intensive differentiation and interconnection of function, as well as more extensively developed.

5. The gradual increase in DNA size, amount and the ensuing genetic load tends to alter species from an r-type toward a K-type mode of development and adaptation, and can be expected to arise as a result of K-type selection factors.

6. A supercritical point will be reached in loading of DNA such that the system becomes informationally noisy and possibly breaks down in its capacity to confer trait adaptability to a species or type of organism, as a result of which extinction can be expected, especially in a context when such a heavy genetic load may intefere with an organisms ability to become more r-adapted to changing circumstances. This would be evident in lower rates of fertilization, conception and successful births, as well as more frequent cases of immature organisms failing to develop properly to mature reproductive form.

7. In the long run, additive process to DNA seem to occur far more frequently, at a much greater rate, than deletive processes. This entails that deletive processes in the fossil record are probably unusual and exceptional. Deletion of DNA from gene pools probably takes the form of negative selection that favors lower loads of variability between individuals.

From the standpoint of this theory, the rise of haploidy in chromosomes represented a major development. Sexual reproduction guaranteed a kind of metabiotic dependency for transmission on other organisms, and that each cell would normally carry a double complement of genetic information. We know from gene studies that for every trait or trait complex there will be two alleles that are possibly represented. We do not yet understand the mechanisms involved that assures the dominance of expression of one allele over the recessive counterpart. It is possible that more than one kind of recessive or dominant allele can occur in multi-trait systems. Haploidy may have assured a backup system in case of error in genetic coding sequences, and it may also have provided a basis by which genes had to be regularly exchanged between organisms to prevent or at least forestall perhaps the rise of monogenetic trait systems. It may have provided as well a context within which DNA had a basis for additive accumulation in a manner that may have minimized the deleterious effect of such processes. Haploidal systems comprise in general a greater range of trait variability that would enable such systems to better adapt through population growth, given that such systems are in a fundamental sense, when compared to more primitive bacteria, in general slower to reproduce and more complex in their organizational structure. Haploidy therefore may have provided the platform of builtin intergenerational genetic variation to enable more complex trait-systems to be developed. It certain provided the frame work for an inherent increase in the number of genes available to do the work. Haploidy leads into polyploidal systems, and polyploidy has also been observed to occur in a limited number of cases that are to be considered aberrant.

The kind of system we see is a long term evolutionary advantage to increased trait systems of DNA, and to the inherent variability these systems afford in terms of trait-differentiation and adaptation, even at the expense of short term stability or deleteriousness of carrying a heavy genetic load. This works as a kind of cybernetic feedback system such that increasing DNA structure increases adaptability, which in turn may foster conditions leading to further addition of DNA.

The gradual accretion and organization of DNA is simply accountable in terms of the basic biochemical processes that occur in the construction of DNA in the first place--it is possible that the signals that shut down the construction of DNA may result in the addition of more DNA material than is normally required or encoded for. DNA construction may on occasion fail to stop or go into a kind of overdrive that results in a kind of experimentation of the system through systematic variation. Cancer cells would represent one kind of DNA transcription system that has gone awry, leading to the continuous replication of new cells, but without genetic variation.

This theory is based upon a very fundamental premise about basic biological variability. It can be summarized thus:

Every living cell that is produced as the product of cellular division, is biochemically unique in its overall trait-properties.

No two cells, however related, are exactly identical to one another. All cells have a degree of variation within which they can achieve expression, and this variation occurs within the framework of the cell's membranes and internal structure, as well as in its DNA encoding. What I will call as inherent fundamental variability is really the basis for all variation of pattern and evolutionary change in living forms. It provides the basis for the successive cellular differentiation of cells within some developing tissue matrix that results in the eventual differentiation and specialization of cell function in multi-cellular organisms. This variation is continuous and occurs at a continuous rate, and can be accounted for by the shear bio-chemical and macro-molecular complexity observed within all cellular life-forms. Cells, as heterogenous, enzyme based rate systems, depend upon speed of reactions within a very small area in order to accomplish their metabolic and growth/reproductive functions.

Inherent fundamental variability of cellular systems is the basis for the biological relativity of living systems and for evolutionary irreversibility of such systems through time. It assures that changes will occur in an historically forward direction, as once new systems emerge, they will continue to vary, and will not return to the state of previous systems.

We can therefore understand those few very conservative systems in nature that appear to change very slowly. They must exhibit a system in which inherent fundamental variability, and its integrative, chaotic effects in mature organisms, is kept in check and minimized. The mechanism of control in this case may be an narrow adaptive equilibrium that assures a minimization of genetic load and the selective elimination of any strong variants. This may be reinforced sexual by built in systems of preference that serve to minimize the crossing of heterozygous forms and that may lead to a long crane-like bottlenecking of genetic variability represented by such species.

Genetic addition can be seen therefore as a buil-in function of systems of DNA production and replication in which the processes of DNA transcription and replication are decoupled from the processes of other cellular metabolism, growth and reproduction, and in which case control mechanisms exist that may permit the accumulation of excess DNA without deleterious effects upon the functioning of the cell, or even in its reproductive phase. Such systems are clearly represented by the eukaryotic domain, and they are represented essentially by the incorporation of prokaryotic forms, chloroplasts and mitochondria, as internalized forms. It is possible that the DNA from these prokaryotic subunits was contributed to the DNA of the enlarged proto-eukaryotic cell to enable a platform for greater differentiation of form and function than was otherwise possible.

This may also have set the stage for multi-cellular organization of increasingly more complex systems. Such systems are represented by shared inheritance of a single complex of DNA trait material that controls the differential growth and function of all the cells with each successive generation. The cells of such a system yield reproductive function, and usually motility, in order to enhance the productive function of the system as a whole--they gain from this an environment that is minimal optimal and suitable to their survival. That reproductive function must be yielded to increase the potential for social organization is a principle that was not lost upon social insects, and it appears to be an important emerging concern for oversaturated human populations as well. Human systems have accomplished this by the superimposition of monogamy, or alternative the alpha predominance of indivduals who are exclusively polygamous. Further increase in human population is creating a demand for further control of human reproduction to monoparous families.

The rise of multi-cellular systems again can be seen as having been made possible by the functional segregation of sexual reproductive function from normal cellular metabolism, growth and division replacement, which was the product of separating processes of DNA encoding and replication from the encoding and replication of the cell body itself. In such a context, generations of cells stemming from the same parent generation can be increasingly organized in such a way that some cells carry reproductive functions selectively on behalf of the entire cellular community, while other cells provide other functional roles in the organization of the community structure.

It can be seen that DNA transcription may therefore result in a systematically changing genetic structure through time for successive generations of these organized cells, such that specialized functions of select cells become increasingly expressed by the subsequent copies of the DNA. This is possible if we conceive that in a DNA detached system, the RNA transcription process may introduce regular and systematic variations of structural encoding at regular intervals. Again, as mentioned previously, this may be the result of a master or controlling DNA, or of built-in pathways within the genetic coding itself, or by some genetic signaling system we do not yet understand, or else by the common environment or emerging tissue matrix in which the cell itself is embedded. In this regard, a base stem cell may become differentiated in its growth in any number of alternative directions depending upon the biochemical nutrient base and other properties made available to it. Hormones, steroids and certain kinds of enzymes in combination appear to me to be particularly implicatable in such differentiation processes. Such biochemical signals may stimulate and activate the transcription of some genetic sequences, and repress or deactivate the transcription of other alternative sequences simultaneously. These reactions would all occur within the context of the cell itself, and in the exo-cellular tissue environment in relation to other cells. Cells may in this regard be exchanging chemical signals in a regular and influential manner. We may speak of possible regulator sites in chromosomal complexes, in organelles, as well as in cell tissue complexes that serve to control the formation and development of cell tissue patterns and functions. Such a prospect suggests something fundamental about genetic systems, that genetic systems of one cell may have a metabiotic and adaptational influence upon the systems of other cells, even possibly affecting the differential expression of genetic traits.

This suggests in turn that genetic chromosomal systems may in fact be communication systems that exhibit a duality of patterning, or even a multiplicity of patterning, that allows the same genetic sequences to be used in fundamentally different ways within different complex arrangements. Folding structures may be the basis for these kinds of systematic differences. Duality of patterning suggests that all traits complexes are both pleiotrophic and polygenic in nature. How the same chromosomal structure may be used to different purposes remains an unanswered mystery. We see a translational structure in successive translation of genetic sequences leading to different forms and functions of the same basic genetic material.

It must be understood in this that genes control exclusively the cellular structure and function of the cell body they inhabit, and they control the transcription process to the next generation of cells. Therefore, however we describe genetic function within a cell, it must be in strict terms of the metabolism and organization of the cell itself. DNA does not work remotely between cells in any direct manner. They function only in terms of the cell that it is situated in, and indirectly upon cells that are near it or that are functionally related, and those cells that it gives rise to through growth and reproduction. That some of these functions may take on extrasomatic properties in relation to other cells is a moot but not unimportant point. A gene that confers, for instance, color to hair, must find expression in the cells that produce the hair follicle, and not in the cells that produce toenail in the big toe. The gene that produces the hair follicle may be the same gene found in the big toe, only differently expressed in combination to other genes. DNA structures must differentiate in the process of ontogenetic growth, just as they do in evolutionary processes of speciation.

Genetic complexes can be seen therefore to control trait-complexes in sophisticated ways. That folding structures of genetic material, with the secondary bond formations that occur, may be important in the organization of these complexes and in influencing epigenetic trait expression.

It is doubtful in this regard that we could take the genetic material from a skin cell in the tip of the big toe, and inject it into the egg cell, and from it derive a replica of the same person who was attached to the big toe. The organizational structure of the DNA in the big toe may not be exactly the same or of the same organizational structure as that in the

DNA is not passed wholly from one generation to the next--it is transcribed and translated afresh with each new generation. The reproductive growth of cells represents a fundamental exponential increase in the total amount of DNA material that is being encoded and used in all of the cells. We may refer therefore to ontogenetic life-cycles of DNA development, differentiation and increasing elaboration from basic and source code to derivative and end-code. In this regard, the rate of DNA replication must be synchronized with the growth of tissue, such that once tissue has reached its stage of full development, growth is switched over to a slower rate of repair and replacement. External limiting factors may fundamentally control these processes, with mature cells obtaining a kind of equilibrium of internalized community structure that represents a saturated cellular system.

With these processes of continuous and successive transcription of DNA, multiple occassions arise in which the average amount of DNA available to a cell may increase through transcription itself. In other words, DNA is continously replicating itself, thus providing the basis for production of excessive code. It is in this production of excessive code that the possibilities for variation and evolution arise. It is possible that even within cell tissues of an organism, genetic material may slowly accumulate in successive generations, which accumulation may have a critical effect in the regulation and timing of metabolic and reproductive growth functions. In this, the growth of any tissue would therefore be seen to follow a normal unimodal growth curve that is very flat. Each successive generation of cell would represent an instantaneous point upon this growth curve. The slope of this curve at any point is quite variable between different kinds of species, and the time required for an organism to reach full maturity may vary from days to months to years or even decades. Cell tissue in old-age would eventually break down in function and structural integrity by the exhaustion of a DNA complex systems that has reached a stage of supercritical chaos in its organization.

The received model of DNA structure is that it is a fairly stable backbone of life. The transcription process is inherently stable, with back up mechanisms to safeguard against error. DNA transcription in eukaryotic life forms passes to messenger RNA as a single large strand. The sequences are linearly encoded with segments of introns. The messenger RNA is then broken down into its sequential units, and transported outside of the cell to ribosomes where it is translated into transport RNA, which RNA then manufacture the protein chain encoded in the sequence. It is the proteins that show the greatest variability of form and structure, and the shape of protein molecules will be critical to determining its enzymatic function and the resulting geometric structure that cell tissue will take. The variability that is demonstrated in life upon a fundamental level is best expressed at the stage of the folding structures of the protein molecules, and the larger structures these molecules form. These sequences are discretely determined by the precise DNA coding sequences. It is known that point mutations occur in DNA sequences with regular frequencies, and there are recording errors in the transcription process as well that may result in mishapen end products down the line. DNA sequences can be spliced and juxtaposed. There appears possibly to occur room for variation in the second stage of the slicing up of the mRNA and its transport and transcription back to tRNA. The disassembly of the starter mRNA might result in alteration of sequences.

The entire problem of evolution can be described upon a microscopic level in terms of the process of DNA transcription through RNA sequences in the production of a vast array of different kinds of proteins that constitute the true building blocks of life. Selection will be determined by cell death or by its ability to survive alterations, and by its ability to confer adaptive advantage to the organism of which it is a part.

In the diagram above, we can see the multiple steps involved in the sequence of cellular actions that result ultimately in the outcome of cellular demise or reproductive success. With each step, the degree of variability of pattern becomes magnified exponentially. At the same time, with each successive step, the potential for error pattern to arise randomly and for its effects to become pronounced magnifies exponentially as well.

1. Random changes that occur in more basic and earlier steps are likely to have more pronounced and generalized consequences.

2. Random changes that occur in the final steps of the process are less likely to have major or pronounced effects, and will only affect specific protein molecules.

Previous to the final step, it is possible that what I call endo-somatic factors may play a part in determine the structural and functional outcomes of the process. In the final step, it is apparent that extrasomatic factors will play a decisive part in determining the outcomes for the continuation of the cell line. These factors may be independent of endosomatic factors or resulting structures, for instance, chance death of an organism due to some natural disaster. It is expected that the majority of mutation events are likely to be either negative or neutral in their evolutionary effects, and this can be accounted for by the fossil record that suggests that the vast majority of life forms eventually became extinct. Neutral build up of genetic mutations are likely to have in the long run a negative effect upon the subsequent population as a whole, but may confer a wider range of adaptability to a select number of offspring.

It is evident that there are entire families of proteins that share amino acid sequences in a non-random manner and that indicate some measure of genetic relationship and common inheritance of structure. The repertoire of protein structures and functions has evolved in time, as have the necessary genetic precursors--the DNA sequences, that determine these protein structures. The pattern observed in protein sequence coding of related proteins, indirectly reveals patterns of change that occur in the underlying DNA sequences.

Regardless of this, it is apparent that DNA change is the basis of evolutionary development. Though the greatest genetic variability is found in terms of the folding structures of proteins, and their derivative structures, it is clear that the basis for variability of these structures begins with the DNA material itself. DNA material must exhibit a minimal degree of variability in coding sequences. It is evident for instance that point mutation may result in the attempt of the DNA strand to repair itself not by the excision of the mutated component, but by the addition of more components that correct for the coding error and possibly mask this error. Haploid sets of genes may have been a device for the protection against random genetic mutuation, which effects might result in the suppression of the traits encoded, and the activation of the complementary set of genes that are tied to the same trait complex.

It is apparent that genetic mutations must build up over time upon a single chromosome, and that eventually this will result in this chromosome having a fundamentally different set of sequences than the complementary one. It is known that all chromosomes come in sets of two, and that all chomosomes are whole. There are never half or quarter chromosomes in organisms. This suggests that at some point, differentiated pairs of chromosomes may in fact separate from one another and become replicated as two independent sets. Separate chromosomes will differentiate more and more as a function of time. The alternative is that a chromosome may grow in size and sequence length until it becomes divided into two separate and independent strands, or becomes divisible by some mechanism.

To what extent must chromosomal variation of gene sequence occur before the resulting organisms are biologically separate from their progenitors is unknown. Presumably it does not require too much difference for this to occur. The fact that this variation occurs only in the sperm and egg cell constrains the model somewhat, except that we must realize that new sperm and egg cells are being produced or exist via mature sexual organs within the body. This provides a pathway within the context of the larger organism for the occurrence of further genetic mutation that may have a direct evolutionary consequence. Mutations occurring in toe-cells are not likely to have the same evolutionary effect.

Most mutations are probably deleterious in the long run, but continuous mutation and transcription error will create changes in protein structures that will open the door to the possibility of non-deleterious or even beneficial changes to happen. The amazing trait plasticity of living forms, evidenced by so many different kinds of organisms that seem so well streamlined and adapted to their main host environments, is accountable for purely in terms of this protein variability that is the result of a number of different mechanisms possibly occurring at the same time.

The question to be answered is to what extent must DNA material become altered before there can be said to occur speciation and reproductive isolation between two or more organisms. In this context, with multicellular organisms, the alterations must affect only the DNA material located within the sexual gametes of the parents. The mutation of genetic materials in other cell components of the parent organism may indirectly affect the survival of the organism, but these factors will not be replicated or become expressed in the genotypes of the offspring. One of the trade-offs in terms of controlled reproduction for muli-cellular organisms is that the generation time between reproduction at which time evolutionary changes can be expressed becomes extended over considerable periods of time, and in general loses its exponential growth function. As length of generation time increases, the rate of evolutionary development must slow down accordingly. There must be a corresponding increase in the potential for genetic variation in larger, more differentiated organisms, that is due to the larger complement of genes necessary for encoding and for their slower rates of replication, but this is perhaps balanced by the confinement of reproductive cells to specialized classes.

It is evident that there occurs phyletic increase in the size and number of chromosomes available for sexual reproduction. In this case, we see no "half" units. We find in the sexually reproductive world only paired sets that occur in discrete numbers.

The basis for the argument of exponential evolution is the idea that mutation mechanisms alone, that tend to be conservative, cannot explain by itself a fundamental feature of evolutionary divergence, and that is the enlargement of the chromosomal complement of the genome with increasing speciation. Other unknown mechanisms must be invoked to explain this increase in gene numbers besides mutation rates or even simple transpositions. Both these mechanisms describe how genes differentiate on a fundamental level, but not how they accumulate or increase in number. I propose a list of viable candidates, all but one of which are based upon empirically described mechanisms that normally occur in cells, or that are known to have occurred in cells during their evolutionary development from prokaryots to eukaria. These mechanisms are listed below:

1. DNA Insertion: Extraneous DNA from other microbes, or from organelles in the cell known to contain DNA, become incorporated at some stage into the genome of the nucleus of the cell and become a permanent part of the DNA structure, either as a whole structure, or as segmentable substructures that could be variably incorporated into already preexisting DNA molecules.

2. RNA Back Translation: This is only a hypothetical pathway that suggests that foreign RNA might somehow become involved in a process of back-translation of DNA, as is known to occur, for instances, in the life-cycles of retroviruses.

3. Viral Addition: Viruses are known to carry a DNA or RNA complement that can be inserted systematically into a cell nucleus or into its relevant ribosomal RNA structures, and there be incorporated into the normal complement. It is possible that in certain instances, such inserted strands may become a permanent part of the DNA strand of the host cell, thereby fundamentally augmenting the number of DNA. A chance mutation of such a strand in the process of insertion or during its period of insertion may affect the subsequent function and recognition of the insertion.

4. Polyploidal Differentiation: This theory suggests that polyploidal is a natural consequence of chromosomal replication that leads to the formation of multiple pairs of chromosomes, which may or may not be active within the genome, but which would subsequently diverge and differentiate in terms of mutation and transposition of available elements. Polyploidy can be explained in terms of the ability of cells to withstand high rates of genetic mutation, providing "back up" copies of genes that can be "turned on" in the case of genetic failure of the master gene.

Two other sets of pathways must be suggested in this process. The first is some combination of any or all of the pathways above, and the second is some combination of any of these pathways with or of unknown and as yet undescribed pathways employing other kinds of mechanisms of genetic alteration.

Folded macromolecular protein structures, some exceedingly large and complex, account for the essential epigenetic and mechanical information required for all living systems to function and reproduce. Whatever may or may not be occurring upon the level of DNA duplication, we need to pay attention to the informational and mechanical functions of the vast array of protein structures, as well as their interactions, in the determination of traits, trait-functions and character displacement of actual biological traits. Furthermore, if proteins can be demontrated to interact in complex ways, then it is possible to show that proteins occur within a complex matrix structure defined by their interactions, which structure determines the outcomes for the organism that is composed by these structures. In other words, various combinations of proteins may interact in various consistent complexes that lead to the realization and expression of traits, their continuous modification within structural constraints, and their displacement toward certain streamlined outcomes.

Thus, it can be seen that changes that do occur at the level of DNA or RNA sequencing, can dramatically affect outcomes of traits and their expression upon a mesoscopic level--that level that would be available to be seen with the naked eye. They do so by altering the proportions of input of these sequential informational chains to the various distributed matrices of folded protein structures that guide the construction and action of actual morphological traits and their associated behavioral properties. The intermediation of protein structures as an informational transmission framework entails that there can be no strict "one gene-one trait" correspondence in operation, if traits are multi-protein structures to begin with, requiring the input of numerous different DNA sequences. All cellular actions and constructions are intermediated by protein structures that are the consequence of DNA sequence transcription in one part of the cell or another.

It is my interest to characterize the class of information systems that is represented by natural biological systems, in particular the cellular dynamics of the DNA-RNA systems of transcription leading to replication and protein production, in terms of informational systems theory derived from the cognitive sciences and the theory of automata.

A part of this understanding is the modeling of the processes of information control and dynamics that occur within the cell, between cells, and between cells and their environment. In particular, it is an attempt to characterize the feedback processes that occur within such informational dynamics in terms that allow us to better understand these naturally occurring systems from a standpoint of natural systems theory and advanced systems science.

The model used in the theory of automata, generally that of a tape reading instrument that may record changes, or make changes to a record in some constrained/unconstrained manner, based upon the reading of a string or sequence of signals, is particularly a propos to the mechanical description of how DNA becomes transcribed and replicated in the cell. This is particularly interesting, because, like systems such as the biological brain, these systems arose stochastically and yet seem capable of independent deterministic functioning in a manner that can be described as a kind of natural intelligence.

How can we create a system to study cellular evolution and development? I can imagine large aquarium-like structures with matrices embedded for the formation of different forms of life. Different spots would be available for making tests, and for microscopic observation.