Science Forums 2

[HydrogenBond]

Although entropy is important to life, lowering entropy is the rule relative to the maintenance and evolution of life. Forming the DNA or proteins, from smaller molecules lowers entropy relative to the molecules. Life needed to evolve this entropy lowering mechanism. Attaching a molecule to a transport protein, lowers the entropy of a small molecule and even gives ordered direction to where it will go. Packing proteins for the DNA lower the entropy of the DNA. Even proofer reading enzymes get rid of the disorder within too much entropy in the DNA.

If you look at the energy curve of a substrate on an enzyme, the activation energy is lowered so it can react easier. Increasing entropy is endothermic. As such, the enzyme, by the lowering activation energy is lowering the energy that entropy of the substrate can use by itself. This is a good way to prevent other things from happening relative to the situation we add more energy for higher entropy in the substrate.

Evolving from RNA to DNA lowered entropy. This can be inferred from the relative stability of the two under a wide range of conditions, where the order in the DNA double helix remains very stable relative to RNA. Evolution could simply be life figuring out ways to lower the entropy.

Let me give an interesting example. The human mind allows complex language partly because of our memory. With memory being due to order in synapses, by simply increasing the entropy lowering ability of the brain, it also allows more long term stable memory.