Chris Adami - Life Before Evolution

BEACON Seminar January 29, 2021 Chris Adami Life Before Evolution One of the definitions of life is “that which evolves“, but to understand the origin of life we need to consider the dynamics of molecular systems before evolution has emerged as the driving force for increasing complexity. I propose to view life as information that replicates itself, and calculate the likelihood of spontaneous emergence of information as a function of the bias in monomer production rates. Dedicated Artificial Life experiments show that the predicted exponential increase in the likelihood of spontaneous information via biased production indeed materializes. To understand how evolution might take hold among proto-replicators, I investigate the fitness landscape of information before the advent of evolution, by scanning trillions of digital molecules.