124 HISTORY OF THE OCEANS 



systems or coacervate drops which were the original precursors of 

 primitive organisms. The formation of coacervate drops is the 

 most vigorous means for the concentration of large molecular 

 compounds from dilute solutions. At the same time, the fact that 

 protoplasm, the contemporary carrier of life, has the structure of 

 a complex coacervate must also be recognized as a very important 

 one. 



Modern laboratory investigations of coacervate drops permit us 

 to outline (certainly only hypothetically) both the process for 

 their formation and the course of their further evolution in the 

 waters of the primeval ocean. At the beginning, on the emergence 

 of coacervate drops, two circumstances existed which were very 

 important for their subsequent evolution. On the one hand, 

 certain individual physicochemical peculiarities within each drop 

 affected the processes within that drop. On the other, any chemical 

 processes occurring within the drop and, in particular, any combi- 

 nation of them must affect the future of that drop. Some con- 

 tributed to greater dynamic stability of the drop, but others were 

 unstable and led to the disappearance of a given coacervate 

 system. This may be observed in our experiments on introducing 

 various catalysts, particularly enzymes, into coacervate drops. 

 Thus even at this early stage in the coacervate drop evolution, 

 there appears to have been a certain "selection" in the basic 

 colloid systems as a result of their suitability for preserving the 

 particular system under the conditions of its continuous inter- 

 action with the surrounding medium. 



With the mass growth of the basic coacervate systems in waters 

 of the primeval hydrosphere resulting from this "selection," only 

 those could exist and develop within which the reactions of 

 disintegration and synthesis were so coordinated that recurrent 

 chains and cycles of reactions were stable. Consequently, the 

 formation of new substances or structures can occur again and 

 again. With stability caused by the recurrence of interconnected 

 and coordinated reactions there arose the capacity for self- 

 reproduction, one of the characteristics of living organisms. 



From this point on one may speak of the emergence of life. At 

 this stage in the evolution of matter, natural selection acquired 

 its biological sense in full measure. Under this check on the 



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