Self-empowerment of life through RNA networks, cells and viruses

Abstract

Our understanding of the key players in evolution and of the development of all organisms in all domains of life has been aided by current knowledge about RNA stem-loop groups, their proposed interaction motifs in an early RNA world and their regulative roles in all steps and substeps of nearly all cellular processes, such as replication, transcription, translation, repair, immunity and epigenetic marking. Cooperative evolution was enabled by promiscuous interactions between single-stranded regions in the loops of naturally forming stem-loop structures in RNAs. It was also shown that cooperative RNA stem-loops outcompete selfish ones and provide foundational self-constructive groups (ribosome, editosome, spliceosome, etc.). Self-empowerment from abiotic matter to biological behavior does not just occur at the beginning of biological evolution; it is also essential for all levels of socially interacting RNAs, cells and viruses.

Natural languages and RNA virus evolution

“…Thus, RNA‐based infectious agents can be considered the innovators of the already existing web of RNA interactions within the cell. This perspective is in line with the concept of ‘virolution’, which proposed that the main variations favouring the evolution of cellular life were not random point mutations or even recombination, but actually the alterations caused by viral infections, such as insertions of the nucleic acid agent into the cellular genome (Villarreal, 2015; Villarreal & Witzany, 2023).…”

“…Under this view, it should be possible to reconstruct the remote past of current genomes from a prebiotic origin, although necessarily in a more complex context where compartmentation and metabolism were also present, as proposed by the field of prebiotic systems chemistry (Ruiz‐Mirazo et al., 2014; Ruiz‐Mirazo et al., 2017). Thus, it could have been initiated by populations of small replicative RNA elements organized as quasispecies and quasispecies consortia in which the object of selection is the community (Cacho & Gómez, 2001; Eigen & Schuster, 1977; Wilke et al., 2001; Villarreal & Witzany, 2013a; Villarreal & Witzany, 2023).…”

“…In summary, molecular biocommunication applies a sociological approach to understand the achievements of molecular agents, viral quasispecies and molecular communities in building increasingly complex and coordinated cells and organisms since the origin of life. Starting from quasispecies (Domingo et al., 1978; Eigen & Schuster, 1977) and quasispecies consortia (Villarreal & Witzany, 2013b; Villarreal & Witzany, 2023), together with metabolism and compartmentalization (Ruiz‐Mirazo et al., 2017), increasingly complex and innovative interaction networks have been developed. They include the connections among agents that gave rise to genetic code (Witzany & Baluška 2012), the functions of agents that may have enjoyed different interactions in different strata of biological evolution (Ariza‐Mateos et al., 2019), and, in general, the roles played by social communication in solving molecular or ecological problems during the adaptation to changing environments (Villarreal & Witzany, 2021).…”

Sentient cells as basic units of tissues, organs and organismal physiology

“…The central theme of the evolution and development of multicellular organisms is cell–cell communication at multiple levels (Arias, 2023). Indeed, infection dynamics, especially viral infections, should be considered another form of cross‐communication among the cellular domains and the virome (Baluška, 2009; Witzany, 2010; Witzany & Baluška, 2014; Villarreal & Witzany, 2019, 2023; Miller et al., 2023). We will discuss this forgotten aspect of cell biology and suggest that this feature is essential for our understanding of all multicellular organisms, including humans.…”