著者

Matsuno Koichiro

出版者

生命の起原および進化学会

雑誌

Viva origino (ISSN:09104003)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.39, no.1, pp.11-18, 2012-06-20

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Unless the stipulation of the detailed balance is forcibly imposed on a theoretical ground of whatever type, chemical reactions proceeding there could already be selective internally. What is in place instead is the detour balance that can allow the participation of intermediary reactions in implementing the overall balancing in the involved chemical reactions. The evolutionary nature of chemical reactions in the absence of the detailed balance rests upon the persistent imbalance, even though the slightest one, between a direct pair of the forward and the backward reactions. Some reaction products being set free from the stipulation of the detailed balance can exhibit the chemical affinities that were not actualized in the initial reactants. The lack of the mutual consistency between the reactants and their chemical affinities makes the reactions internally selective and evolutionary, and could have implemented a selective process even prior to the onset of Darwinian natural selection. One likely candidate for constantly breaking the mutual consistency between the reactants and their chemical affinities on the primitive Earth could have been those chemical reactions riding on hydrothermal circulation of seawater around the hot vents in the ocean.