2006 年 34 巻 1 号 p. 40-50
We present in this paper the protein interaction world hypothesis about the origins of life. According to this hypothesis life originated as a self-reproducing and expanding set of molecular interactions, and living cells are such sets of molecular interactions. We emphasize that according to our hypothesis the reproduction of molecular interactions is the critical aspect of such systems, while other origins of life hypotheses put the emphasis on the reproduction of molecules. We present molecular interaction systems in general, with examples presented in cellular context. We discuss the evolution of life forms according to our theory, and we show that RNA and DNA molecules can be seen as generators of molecular interactions that serve as memories of other such interactions in the context of cells viewed as molecular interaction systems.
