Repetition as the essence of life on this earth: music and genes
S. Ohno
Beckman Research Institute, City of Hope Duarte, California 91010
Hamatol Bluttransfus ,
31, 511-518 (1987)
Abstract
In prebiotic nucleic acid replication, templates appear to have been in short
supply. A single round of tandem duplication of existing oligomers assured
progressive extension of templates to the length adequate for encoding of polypeptide
chains. Thus, the first set of coding sequences had to be repeats of base oligomers
encoding polypeptide chains of various periodicities. On one hand, the readiness of
these periodical polypeptide chains to assume alpha-helical and/or beta-sheet
secondary structures contributed to the extremely rapid initial functional
diversification of these polypeptide chains. It would be recalled that most, if not all, of
the sugar-metabolizing enzymes had already achieved the inviolable functional
competence before the division of prokaryotes from eukaryotes. On the other hand, a
certain (dipeptidic?) of the peptidic periodicities was apparently chosen as the
timekeeping unit by the biological clock. Musical compositions too apparently
evolved originally as a timekeeping device. Accordingly, repetitiousness is evident in
all musical compositions. Evolution of musical compositions from the early Baroque
to the late Romantic parallels that of coding sequences from rather exact repeats of
base oligomers to more complex modern coding sequences in which repetitious
elements are less conspicuous and more varied. Inasmuch as the earth is governed by
the hierarchy of periodicities (days, months and years), such reliance on periodicities
is rather expected.
