Manfred Eigen Research Articles

The Idea of Creation and the Theory of Autopoietic Processes

Systems theory is proposed as a major resource for reconceptualizing a Christian theology of creation. Section I outlines the principles of the theory of autopoietic systems and discusses in particular Manfred Eigen's and Stuart Kauffman's differing views of the emergence of life. Section II shows how biblical texts conceive of God's “blessing” as a divine installment and reshaping of spatio‐temporal fields for creaturely self‐productivity. On this double basis, Section III undertakes a constructive attempt to formulate a theology of self‐productivity within a Trinitarian framework. The unity of divine self‐consistency and capacity for self‐relativization is seen as the clue for understanding how God not only sustains the world in general but also influences particular processes by changing the overall probability pattern of evolving systems.

Refuge of spandrels.

Refuge of spandrels.

Quasispecies and the implications for virus persistence and escape

Background: In the 1970s Manfred Eigen and colleagues proposed a new model of molecular evolution to explain adaptability and rapid evolution of simple replicons, as those that probably populated the earth at the onset of life. This model of evolution placed emphasis on mutant generation, to the point of invalidating the concept of wild-type genomes as a defined sequence of nucleotides. In striking similarity with the proposals for such early replicons, present-day RNA viruses consist of complex distributions of nonidentical but closely related genomes termed quasispecies. Objectives: To discuss indeterminations inherent to a quasispecies structure and to the analytical procedures to define it, biological implications of quasispecies, and the need to take into account this type of population structure, in order to design effective strategies to prevent and control diseases caused by highly variable viruses. Results: Quasispecies have many biological implications, extending from viral pathogenesis to the emergence of new pathogens, rapid antigenic variation, and alterations in cell tropism, virulence, host range and viral gene expression. Conclusions: Diseases caused by highly variable RNA viruses prove very difficult to control and vaccine development against such viruses are largely unsuccessful. It is important to understand quasispecies composition and dynamics, as quasispecies are an important step in the natural history of RNA viruses.

Natural and unnatural answers to evolutionary questions.

Although Sol Spiegelman, Manfred Eigen, and other pioneers (2, 3) initiated the study of directed molecular evolution using Qβ bacteriophage, in recent years such experiments have become much more powerful due to the advent of facile methods for DNA synthesis and nucleic acid amplification. Now, functional nucleic acid binding species (aptamers) and catalysts can be …

Reviews

Book review in this article: The Advancement of Science: Science without Legend Objectivity without Illusions. By Philip Kitcher. Steps toward Life: A Perspective on Evohtion. By Manfred Eigen, with Ruthild Winkler‐Oswatitsch. The Religious Critic in American Culture. By William Dean. Biology, Ethics, and the Origins of Life. Edited by Holmes Rolston, III.

Scientist and Statesman: Ephraim Katchalski-Katzir at 80.

During May 13-16, 1996, the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot was the host to an ititernational symposium to mark the 80th birthday of Professor Ephraim Katzir, better known to older biochemists as Ephraim Katchalski. The symposium, entitled“Perspectives in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology,” included five Nobelists-Max Perutz, Paul Berg, Arthur Kornberg, Manfred Eigen, and Edmond Fischer-with other scientists from North America and Europe and strong participation in the program by Israeli scientists. The symposium was a tribute from the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the Weizmann Institute to one of Israel’s most distinguished scientists. Born in Poland on May 16, 1916, Katchalski emigrated to Palestine in 1922 and with his brotherAharon decided, after joining the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, to pursue careers in research and teaching. This they did against a background of strife with the Arab population, in which they were soon involved by their joining the illegal Jewish defense organization, the Haganah. Katchalski has described in an autobiographical article (1) secretly manufacturing war materials at night in the research laboratory (for example, tear gas) while in his overt daytime research he was preparing and studying synthetic polypeptides, one of the contributionsforwhich he is best known. The Weizmann Institute, the successor to the Sieff Institute, was founded in 1949. Itwas named after Chaim Weizmann, himself an organic chemist, who became the first President of the State of Israel and whose career Katchalski’s has paralleled. When the State of Israel was established in 1948, it was invaded by the Arab armies and Katchaiski was placed in charge of the Israeli army science corps. Because, as Katchalski writes (1), “some of the American scientists who were (at that time) supposed to take charge of departments at the Institute were jittery about coming to Israel, Aharon was asked to be temporary head of the Department of Polymers and I was made acting head of the Department of Biophysics. These two appointments soon became permanent.” Reference should be made to Katchalski’s memoirs (1,2) for a detailed account and bibliography of his many contributions to protein chemistry, beginning with the synthetic polyaminoacids and including the preparationof immobilized enzymes, something that at the time was not recognized to be of significant industrial importance and from which the Weizmann Institute gained only a small sum from a patent, but which is now used on a large scale in industry. The most notable example is the manufacture of high fructose corn syrup, the productionof which in the United States alone in 1995 exceeded 10 million tons. Scientific recognition of this achievement came to Katchalski from the country that first exploited immobilized enzymes for industrial use. In 1985 lie was the first recipient of the Japan Prize. Katchalski continued as head of the Weizmann Department of Biophysics through 1973. He was again involved in the wars with the Arab countries, servimig during the Six Day War in 1967 as the chief scientist of the Defense Ministry and then for the five years from 1973 to 1978 was swept up completely into the affairs of his country by accepting the invitation of Prime Minister Golda Meir to be nominated forthe presidency,as a result of which he became the fourth President of the State of Israel. He has defined his presidency as beginning with the Yom Kippur War in October 1973 and ending with the surprise visit to Jerusalem by Anwar Sadat in November 1977 that opened

"Game Strategies": A Multimedia Project

In their book Laws of the Game: How the Principles of Nature Govern Chance, Manfred Eigen and Ruthild Winkler describe balance, growth and evolution in nature and in human society as the result of chance and law. These elements, however, are also typical features of games, e.g. the game of dice, which is based on specific rules; games can thus, in turn, simulate and demonstrate the laws of nature in the process of evolution. The authors’ multimedia project picks out one of the strategies identified by Eigen and Winkler, the game called ‘Selection’, and visualizes it by using a variety of approaches in pictorial presentation and music. On this basis, the authors were able to develop their own artistic definitions and statements.

Trees, bundles or nets?

Organisms are classified hierarchically. The reason why such a classification is appropriate is that organisms have arisen by a branching process: as Darwin realized, the best image of the evolutionary process is a tree. But the exchange of genetic material, in the sexual process and in more distant transfer events, means that sometimes a net is a more suitable image. Given the characteristics of a set of objects, can we decide how they arose, and whether a hierarchical classification is appropriate? A geometrical approach to this question has recently been suggested by Manfred Eigen and his colleagues.

Conceptual advances in organized solutions: a milestone in the physical chemistry of biological organization

Abstract

Natural Selection, Hypercycles and the Origin of Life

Over the last eighteen years Manfred Eigen and his co-workers have postulated a new theory about the origin of life on earth that has presented a detailed account of how many of the features of extant living organisms (such as a universal genetic code and protein-nucleic acid interdependence) might have arisen from purely physical interactions.2 This theory is critically based on the special dynamical properties of certain chemical cycles called “hypercycles” which cause some of them to exhibit hyperbolic growth over time while undergoing selection. The purpose of this paper is to separate two aspects of this theory and then to study the first one in greater detail. The first aspect consists of a physical account of evolution by natural selection at the molecular level that depends only on the kinetics of certain chemical systems and can be applied to a variety of such systems. The second consists of the special dynamical properties that are exhibited when this account is applied, specifically, to hypercycles.

List of publications by Manfred Eigen.

List of publications by Manfred Eigen.

On the role of science in the postindustrial society: “Logos”—the empire builder

The hypothesis that language and DNA represent two stages of the same evolutionary path is briefly evaluated. Volterra equations, so useful in describing the dynamics of competing systems are, in fact, equally efficient in describing social behavior, as shown in numerous examples. The emergence of language first, and science later, interpreted as a metalanguage, are attributed to a “hypercyclization” of basic competing utterances in analogy of hypercyclization of quasi-species of replicating molecules in Manfred Eigen's theory of DNA development and evolution.

Hypercycles and the origin of life.

Perhaps the most difficult step to explain in the origin of life is that from the replication of molecules (RNA for example) in the absence of specific proteins, to the appearance of polymerases and other proteins involved in the replication of RNA and themselves coded for by that RNA. Suppose we start with a population of replicating RNA molecules. Without specific enzymes the accuracy of replication is low and hence the length of RNA which could be precisely replicated small. Before replication can be reasonably accurate, there must as a minimum be a specific polymerase, as well as synthetases and tRNAs, which in turn implies an RNA genome of considerable length. Thus, even if one supposes an initially very limited set of codons, one cannot have accurate replication without a length of RNA, say, 2000 or more base pairs, and one cannot have that much RNA without accurate replication. This is the central problem discussed in a series of papers by Manfred Eigen and Peter Schuster proposing the ‘hypercycle’ as a necessary intermediate stage.

Chance and necessity in the life-game

The late Jacques Monod was a frequent visitor to England where his wide-ranging lectures always drew large audiences. The accomplished lucidity of his presentations was such that, at a lecture in Oxford in 1973, one noted with surprise the some- what vague strictures which he made, al- most as an aside, upon those whom he described as ‘a new, subtle class of ani- mists - which I will call the thermo- dynamicists’. The label ‘animist’ was far from being a commendatory term in his vocabulary and he used it to refer to those who try to conceive of any harmony or fundamental significance in the relation between man and nature, other than the mere fact that man has evolved within nature. He went on, as the published text reveals, to interpret the motive of these thermodynamicists as trying ‘ to devise theories, formulations, formalizations, from which they think they can show first, that life could not have failed to start on the earth, and secondly that evolution could not have failed to occur’ [I]. He identified Manfred Eigen as one of this group and would no doubt also have included Ilya Prigogine, who recently warmly reviewed in TIBS [2] Eigen’s book, with R. Winkler, on the ‘life-game’ [3]. It is intriguing to examine further what the question at issue is in the debate between these formidable antagonists. Monod’s views, as expressed in his book [4], in public lectures and through the media, needs little elaboration now. The specific differentia of his position is not