Dynamic Self-organization in an Open Reaction Network as a Fundamental Mechanism for the Emergence of Life

The emergence of life on the earth has attracted intense attention but the mechanism of it still remains an unsolved question. A key problem is that it has been left unclear why a living organism, which is regarded as an open reaction system, can demonstrate dynamic self-organization leading to highly-ordered structures and adaptive and evolutionary behavior. This paper shows by computer simulation that an open reaction network, which is characterized as a network of flexible constituent elements and irreversible processes, is converted to a self-organized system with adaptive and evolutionary ability when it has reached a fully-balanced stationary state. Strikingly, this result indicates that dynamic self-organization spontaneously emerges in a prebiotic chemical system placed under constant thermodynamic forces according to the second law of thermodynamics, not against it. The dynamic self-organization has potential for producing highly ordered chemical structures through evolution and is expected to have played a fundamental role in the emergence of life on the primitive earth.