"Tim Tyler"  wrote in message
news:brncnp$en7$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org...
> Jim Menegay  wrote or quoted:
> > Tim Tyler  wrote in message
news:...
>
[snippage]

> > We can easily imagine "genetic takeovers".
> >
> > But only a few people worry that "organismic takeovers"
might be more
> > difficult to pull off.  How do you gradually evolve a
membrane? [...]
>
> Barriers that hold things together can be built on many
scales - from
> cell walls to sea shells and insect exoskeletons - so they
have
> evolved on multiple occasions.
>
> The original evolution of cell membranes is hypothesised
to have ocurred
> on mineral surfaces - with a lipid layer initially binding
loosely to
> the surface, and then forming blisters and eventually
cells.
>
> The gap between the mineral surface and the lipid layer
provides
> nutrients and exhaust routes - since expecting very much
to make
> it through a primitive membrane is not very resonable.
>
> See, "The Origins of Life" - JMS & ES, p. 56 for a
diagram.

It's so tempting to presume a purely simplistic reductionist
viewpoint and contemplate life's evolution being the
iterative merging of two smaller units to form a larger/more
complex one--genes (or proto-genes) absorbed on a substrate
to form a primitive chromosome, the latter absorbed
(primitive sex?) by a protocell-membrane (blister...or in
solution or suspension, spherical bi-layer droplet) ...
evolution of primitive prokaryote which then absorbs
another, forming the nucleus for a eukaryote, and the
building blocks evolve into complex organisms. The only
question is where do genes come from?--Are there any good
models outside of Kaufman-like autocatylytic enzyme chains
in a non-linear dynamic "soup" far from
equilibrium...chaos...and chance?    ...tonyC
> -- 
> __________
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