The Origin of Life: From Inertia to Active Maintenance — An Energy-Efficiency Interpretation

Key Points

• To explore the structural interpretation of life’s origin through the lens of Energy-Efficiency Theory, focusing on active maintenance.
• Developed a refined structural interpretation of life’s origin
• Identified the membrane as the first plausible buffer
• Conceptualized the first protocell as a nested buffering architecture
• Utilized operational indices as heuristic benchmarking tools
• Designed experiments to differentiate buffered active maintenance from simpler driven persistence
• Active maintenance is proposed as a critical threshold for the origin of life
• Demonstrated the significance of membranes in early cellular structures
• Provided a framework for understanding life's emergence through energy efficiency
• Highlighted the role of buffering architectures in protocell development

Abstract