Live = evolved and selected chemistry ?

[mjs]

Organic chemistry poses a great stereochemical variability due to isoforms. Thus there is an infinite possibility of interactions, making a complex organic chemical system difficult to reach equillibrium.

In such a complex system, in the long term only the reactions with sustainability will prevail and exist in the final mixture.

But isn't life actually a sum of self-sustaining chemical system?

In other words, what is the difference between chemistry and biology? Are they the same thing?

[mjs]

This has very important practical and theoretical implications because:

1)With respect to medicine, if biology is chemistry, then this leaves the option to someday (although maybe not in the near future) know the full map of chemical reactions of each organism, and know exactly how a chemical pathway goes wrong in a disease and therefore treat everything as a chemical automaton…

Additionaly, maybe we can develop strategies on how to preserve this system holistically as a complex chemical automaton, with all the implications with respect to aging…instead of trying to find the magic key gene that will make us immortal..

2)It changes the way we view the origin of life. This is because the question changes into: How self-sustainable complex organic chemical systems can emerge? The rest is about Darwinism..

[mjs]

And of course the most important implication is that even intelligence is only based on chemistry!! Its main role is to promote the sustainability of the organism or the species, or else its survival. Human problems are of no importance for an outsider observer. Its the same as a bee that tries to survive, reproduce itself etc. However, we see things from humans viewpoint, and so we have a false anthropocentric perspective.

[Tatetopa]

Very interesting post. The implications go as far as the question of free will don't they.

The basis for life may be chemistry, yet I think biology plays a role as the process selector.or moderator.

I know this is a crude analogy, but consider a manufacturing plant. Raw materials are received or modified according to input requirements. Those materials are directed to manufacturing cells or lines where components are assembled according to a specified plan. Level after level simple sub assemblies may be combined into more complex products. Meanwhile, there may be other machine centers that do not contribute to output, but supply power, lubrication, fix pileups, and keep the floors clean.

That same assemblage of manufacturing cells might be combined to produce a toaster, washing machine, or flat screen tv. Depending on the arrangement of manufacturing lines, raw materials, and instruction set.

In the case of biology, the machine centers are proteins. Are we at the intersection of biology and chemistry?

Holy cow! I am about to sound like a creationist. The argument I was formulating is that a subset of chemical reactions is selected out of the infinity of possible reactions by a set of process instructions designed to produce a predictable outcome. At some point in organic chemistry, a combination is found that can replicate itself, your concept of self-sustaining. Are the instruction sets chemical? Maybe. At what point does organic chemistry become biology? Is the instruction set a long chain organic molecule? When you toss that molecule into a pool of raw materials, does it begin replicating itself? Does it generate sub assemblies that perform intermediate steps that are more effective at reproducing an error free copy of the original molecule? Is that the beginning of unending complexity and diversity?

So what do you call a gene? Is it biology or a long chain organic instruction set? To affect the factory outcome, you have to change the instruction set. Even if you provide the factory with all of the pre-made components for a flat screen tv; unless you change the instruction set no tv's pop out the end of the assembly line. Knowing the full map of chemical reactions is it seems to me that process instruction set. What is the instruction set? Biology or Chemistry?

[Merc14]

If it's green or wriggles, it's biology.

If it stinks, it's chemistry.

If it doesn't work, it's physics!

Problem solved.

[mjs]

The implications go as far as the question of free will don't they.

The basis for life may be chemistry, yet I think biology plays a role as the process selector.or moderator.

Its like saying that life has to have a sort of organization, or else we would say that Shakespeare's plays are only some combination of letters, or some ink on the paper!

However, from all the millions and trillions of things that had been said written in walls, rocks, papers, etc, during the last 5000-10000 years we only have Shakespeare. Why? Because his plays were selected from history, as the most sustainable ones!! The same thing happened with other works. For instance, Homer's poems were not even written on paper for thousands of years, yet they survived: because of their quality.

And yes, Shakespeare's works are indeed something random to the eyes of a non-human being such as a cat, a bird, etc.....

What i want to say is that, even chemical reactions can evolve in such a way that the most sustainable combinations will eventually be in the final mixture...

[+DieChecker]

From what I remember of college. There was chemistry, biology and organic chemistry, which was somewhere in between.

I'd agree that chemistry is the foundation of biology, since much that happens in this world happens because for a chemical reason. Molecules interacting with each other in a million forms inside just the body of you or I.

[mjs]

From what I remember of college. There was chemistry, biology and organic chemistry, which was somewhere in between.

I'd agree that chemistry is the foundation of biology, since much that happens in this world happens because for a chemical reason. Molecules interacting with each other in a million forms inside just the body of you or I.

Yes! I think this is obviously the case. And in a chaos of chemical reactions, a kind of "darwinism of chemimal reactions" with natural selection and survival of the fittest ones, will slowly select the most sustainable combinations of reactions...