Role of Stress in the Origin of Life

The article shows the compatibility of the concept of thermodynamic inversion (TI) of the origin of life with the theory of stress in (micro)biology. According to the proposed TI concept, the first microorganisms on Earth were formed through an effective (intensified and purposeful) response of organic microsystems to incessant oscillations of physicochemical parameters (i.e., to periodic stress) in a hydrothermal environment. This approach allows us to explain the ability of contemporary microorganisms to respond to stress at the individual and population levels. The ability of microorganisms to effectively react to environmental stress factors is corroborated by a number of molecular and other mechanisms that are described in the article.