The System View of the Origin of Cellular Life

The commonly accepted view in the system biology of the minimal cell is a bottom-up approach which assumes that one can reach the properties of modern cells by stepwise increasing the complexity of biopolymers-containing vesicles. It is argued here that the great gap between the paucity of the results achievable in such a way, vis a vis the complexity of modern minimal cells, opens the question of the validity of this bottom up, stepwise approach as a matter of principle. We present here arguments in favor of an alternative view point, a systemic approach starting from the top, namely with the whole system of a very large population of mutually interacting vesicles initially randomly overfilled with DNA, RNA, proteins. This view is based on published literature data reporting the spontaneous overcrowding of vesicles formed in situ in a diluted solution of biopolymers, once that there is the simultaneous occurrence of vesicle-forming surfactants in the same macromolecular solution [28-32]. The assumption is then made, that if such an enormous number (109-1011) of overfilled vesicles would be formed, then there would be a finite probability that one of them, or even a few, could have the right combination and concentration to start life – or at least the first dynamic steps towards a selection process, which, through mutual interaction, fusion and eventually vesicles proliferation, could arrive at a homeostatic equilibrium, conductive to the first forms of cellular life – possibly already at a level of a quasi-colony.