– Dr. Hans-Joachim Rudolph & Ac. Vimalananda Avadhuta, Microvita Research e.V.
Life arose on planet Earth through five hierarchical stages of increasing molecular complexity: cosmic, geologic, chemical, informational, and biological (1).
In the cosmic stage, the building blocks of life were formed as a byproduct of a nearby supernova explosion. The material was expelled across space to form interstellar clouds, which are factories of organic molecular synthesis. During the formation of the Solar System, this interstellar material was integrated into interstellar dusts, comets and carbonaceous asteroids, which heavily bombarded the newly formed crust of our planet.
In the geologic stage, nucleobases were polymerized into RNA in terrestrial environments such as warm little ponds or crater lakes. Also, fatty acids readily formed membranous vesicles when dispersed in terrestrial aqueous phases.
In the chemical stage, the mixing and recombination of organic molecules occurred within these primitive cell membranes. Empty lipid membranes began to encapsulate various monomers and polymers for molecular symbiosis.
In the informational stage, programmed protein synthesis became available in the prebiotic system and the peptide/RNA world gave rise to the protein/RNA world. A wide range of protein enzymes and structural proteins were synthesized at this stage by translating genetic codes. Some of these enzymes catalyzed more and more complex biochemical reactions (1).
Viruses can be defined as capsid-encoding organisms. In early stages, primordial viruses probably established a long-term association with protocells, in which the latter released a steady stream of viral particles over an extended period of time, benefiting both host and parasite in symbiosis. These ancient RNA viruses had a high mutation rate and underwent evolution and natural selection, just like in cellular life (1).
Traditionally we maintain the ‘cell-first’ hypotheses. In that case viruses are considered to be parasites, which have no own life. Rather they are practically as dead as crystalline chemicals.
The new line of thought is, however, that eukaryotic cells evolved from primordial viruses, where such viruses are not to be identified with the virions, but with protocells, endowed with a single-stranded RNA. In the most archaic case, they would also be devoid of ribosomes (2), having nothing but a lipid membrane, a cytosol enriched with various monomers and polymers, and a translation machine using the GNC code – which is enough to allow for a ‘virus first’ hypothesis.
Accordingly, Jean-Michel Claverie writes in ‘Viruses take center stage in cellular evolution’ (Genome Biology, Volume 7, Issue 6, 2006):
For a viral organism, the virus factory exhibits all the properties of the soma, in which genes are expressed, while the particle state corresponds to the germline, which remains unchanged. If we follow this line of thought, one might think of infection as being analogous to fertilization and the production of new virus particles as being akin to the formation of gametes (3).
In this concept, viruses are very much different from crystalline chemicals! They live and replicate, and there is sufficient scope for microvita to act upon the organic material: The formation of a lipid membrane as well as the folding of proteins and transfer-RNA might occur due to “self-assembly“ in consequence of van der Waals forces. But the formation of virions requires more than that, and in my opinion it needs morphogenetic fields to produce such structures.
So, the question is, how microvita could provide morphogenetic fields?
Here, the key words are ordered water, corticons, bosonic quasiparticles (4). The latter can be produced and annihilated by microvita (5).
Regarding their visibility, I expect that it should be possible to display patterns of ordered water and even single corticons by a sophisticated microscope of the future. To make it more practical, just have a look at these demonstrations:
Figure 1: Chladni plates (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRFysSAxWxI)
Table 1: Analogies between Chladni plates and virus infected protocells
References
- Sankar Chatterjee: The Protein/RNA World and the Origin of Life, Preprints, 2019100167 (2019)
- Sankar Chatterjee, Surya Yadav: The Origin of Prebiotic Information System in the Peptide/RNA World: A Simulation Model of the Evolution of Translation and the Genetic Code. Life, Volume 9, Issue 25 (2019)
- Jean-Michel Claverie: Viruses take center stage in cellular evolution. Genome Biology, Volume 7, Issue 6 (2006)
- Mari Jibu, Kunio Yasue: Quantum Brain Dynamics and Consciousness: An Introduction. Advances in Consciousness Research, Volume 3 (1995)
- Hans-Joachim Rudolph: Microvita: Exploring a New Science of Reality. AuthorHouse, 2017
