The First Gene: The Birth of Programming, Messaging and Formal Control

“The First Gene: The Birth of Programming, Messaging and Formal Control” is a peer-reviewed anthology of papers that focuses, for the first time, entirely on the following difficult scientific questions: *How did physics and chemistry write the first genetic instructions? *How could a prebiotic (pre-life, inanimate) environment consisting of nothing but chance and necessity have programmed logic gates, decision nodes, configurable-switch settings, and prescriptive information using a symbolic system of codons (three nucleotides per unit/block of code)? The codon table is formal, not physical. It has also been shown to be conceptually ideal. *How did primordial nature know how to write in redundancy codes that maximally protect information? *How did mere physics encode and decode linear digital instructions that are not determined by physical interactions? All known life is networked and cybernetic. “Cybernetics” is the study of various means of steering, organizing and controlling objects and events toward producing utility. The constraints of initial conditions and the physical laws themselves are blind and indifferent to functional success. Only controls, not constraints, steer events toward the goal of usefulness (e.g., becoming alive or staying alive). Life-origin science cannot advance until first answering these questions: *1-How does nonphysical programming arise out of physicality to then establish control over that physicality? *2-How did inanimate nature give rise to a formally-directed, linear, digital, symbol-based and cybernetic-rich life? *3-What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for turning physics and chemistry into formal controls, regulation, organization, engineering, and computational feats? “The First Gene” directly addresses these questions.

Few specialists exist in the world in either of two new scientific disciplines: ProtoBioCybernetics and ProtoBioSemiotics. Because of the paucity of researchers in these two fields, the Editor of this anthology was forced to introduce both scientific disciplines by contributing most of the chapters in this initial anthology. Hopefully, this work will seed a long list of contributors to the next ProtoBioCybernetic and ProtoBioSemiotic anthologies. No two fields of science are more fascinating and challenging. Donald E. Johnson is uniquely qualified to contribute to both of these fields by virtue of having multiple PhD’s in chemistry, information theory and computer science. His book Programming of Life is a national best seller, and contains much material directly relevant to this anthology. His book Probability's Nature and Nature's Probability (A call to scientific integrity) also takes an honest look at the constraints of probabilistic resources on what could possibly have occurred randomly over large periods of time. David Chiu is a mathematician and Kirk Durston is a biophysicist, both at the University of Guelph. Their peer-reviewed science journal publications have centered on the difficult problem of measuring the change in Functional Sequence Complexity (FSC) of proteins during evolution. Change in the FSC of proteins as they evolve can be measured in “Fits”— Functional bits. The ability to quantify changes in biofunctionality during evolutionary transition represents one of the most important advances in biological research in recent decades. See especially, Durston, K.K.; Chiu, D.K.; Abel, D.L.; Trevors, J.T. 2007, Measuring the functional sequence complexity of proteins, Theor Biol Med Model, 4, 47 (Free on-line access at http://www.tbiomed.com/content/4/1/47). Because this book is also being made available in e-book format (e.g., for Kindles), many awkward internet links have been deliberately left in the text and reference lists. A glossary is included to define and expound on many technical terms used within this anthology. David L. Abel, Director The Gene Emergence Project Department of ProtoBioCybernetics & ProtoBioSemiotics The Origin of Life Science Foundation, Inc.