For reasons that remain unclear, despite roughly 4 billion years of cellular evolution, cell theory has only three well-accepted postulates1. I previously proposed the gasocrine, circumiacentium, and informatio hypotheses, which state that all cells require gasocrine signaling2, are limited by their environment3, and pass information4, respectively. Based on the gasocrine hypothesis, I proposed that a living cell is one that is capable of performing gasocrine processes5 and that consciousness potentially arises from the sum of gasocrine signaling activities2. However, why must the criteria for a living cell be based only on gasocrine processes and not on other processes? And why would consciousness depend only on gasocrine signaling activities and not on all the "endogenous" and "environmental" molecule- or factor-based signaling in a cell or organism? Furthermore, how could multicellularity have arisen during evolution if unicellular organisms were not conscious of themselves or their environments? Therefore, I propose that cellular consciousness is the sum of its endogenous and environmental signaling, or, more simply, "cellular consciousness is the sum of its signaling activities." A corollary of this hypothesis is that "all cells require consciousness." These hypotheses can be falsified by finding a cell that exhibits consciousness when all its signaling is inhibited, as well as a cell that does not require consciousness. Thus, these hypotheses are potential supplements to cell theory. REFERENCES Hyllner J, Mason C, Wilmut I. Cells: from Robert Hooke to cell therapy—a 350 year journey. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2015; 370:20150320. Anbalagan S. Gasocrine hypothesis - a potential supplement to cell theory. Acta Biochim Pol 2025; 72:15465. Anbalagan S. Circumiacentium hypothesis - a potential supplement to cell theory. Zenodo 2026. Anbalagan S. Informatio hypothesis - a potential supplement to cell theory. Zenodo 2026. Anbalagan S. To Live, or Not to live, That is Not the Question: Perspectives on Defining a Living Cell. Zenodo 2025.
Savani Anbalagan (Tue,) studied this question.