- The period just before advent of cell membranes is what I shall refer to as the late primordial soup times. Assuming that during this period organic compounds which would be sources of carbon skeleton and free energy would be available in plenty and hence would not be a limiting factor for the survival of contemporary biologicals; it would be a free lunch. One would therefore expect the evolutionary pressures to be relaxed. However, after membranes were invented these diffuse biologicals would get a sense of individuality. Evolution would now have a well defined target for it to act upon.
- When faced with a challenge only those cells who have invented a biochemical pathway to solve it will survive. But it probably was when the cell found a way to document this information in the form of genetic information that evolution got a firm substrate to work upon. With it also came the concept of "next generation of cells" who would re-use their ancestral biochemical logic than re-invent it. But the beauty is that the system still allowed for new experiments, in essence allowing the ancestral logic to be overriden.
The events following post-genetic material times probably are just biology trying to solve its own engineering problems.
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