The Origin of Life, Immortality, and Aging

Biological life and immortality have originated due to the unique ability of RNA molecules to catalyze each other’s synthesis in RNA-templated RNA-polymerization reactions. Covered by lipid envelopes, RNA vesicles increase in size through the synthesis of new molecules. The larger vesicles fall occasionally apart into smaller ones and regrow into newer large vesicles. It is a simple and reliable model of self-replicating life origin. By analogy with LUCALUCA (the last universal common ancestor), we propose to honor the first two molecules of RNA from which life originated by the abbreviation FUCAFUCA (the first universal common ancestor). According to the well-known dogma, prokaryotes and some unicellular eukaryotes in the permissive conditions generate genetically identical daughter cells without any alterations that can be interpreted as agingAging. Moreover, they have decreased the population doubling time up to few hours. At these rates of cell division, they have ‘neither time nor possibility for normal agingAging’. AgingAging has obviously emerged later as a useful tool for quick removal of cellular damage. Altruistic ‘kamikaze’ cells selectively accumulated cellular garbage, aged and were eliminated by asymmetric partitioning. In the evolutionary odyssey of multicellular organisms, however, agingAging has changed the role of the useful tool to the most destructive factor. Why has this mysterious transformation occurred and what could be done to recover the reputation of agingAging in multicellular organisms? In a human body, there are nearly equal numbers of bacterial and multicellular cells. Modifications of immortal ‘personalized’ cells (e.g., bacteria with the adult stem cellsAdult stem cells (ASCs)) could be promising. Remarkably, immortal cells strongly increase expression of the old (bacterial) genes and decrease transcription of the multicellular (new) genes. The main difference here is that bacterial cells are immortal in the normal conditions and could age only in stressful environments, whereas the cells of multicellular organisms undergo agingAging in the normal conditions and could become immortal after ‘struggle’ with the differentiation factors. This is a short scenario about the origin of lifeOrigin of life, The, immortalityImmortality, and agingAging.