Mitsuru Furusawa
Neo-Morgan Laboratory Inc.
Kawasaki, Japan

Host: Florian Rüker

Ontogeny (development) and phylogeny (evolution) would be the representative phenomena of creation in living
world. Development proceeds through repetitive “unequal” cell divisions, which are rigorously regulated by the
time-differential expression of genes. It has been long believed that random mutation is the first cause of
evolution. However, our “disparity-mutagenesis” model provided the lagging-strand-biased-mutagenesis, by which
the error-threshold was significantly increased and living things were able to tolerate a very high genetic load1).
Thus, our model nicely explains the so-called “punctuated equilibria”, i.e. a suddenly occurring evolution2). Both
terms “unequal” and “disparity” are directly implicated in the “symmetry breaking”. Accordingly, the concept of
“symmetry breaking” might serve as a common principle to initiate the biological creations. Could it extend to
other creative phenomena generally observable in nature?
1) Furusawa, M. (2012). Implications of fidelity difference between the leading and the lagging strand of DNA
for the acceleration of evolution. Frontiers in Oncology. 2 (Article 144): 1-10.
2) Gould, S. and Eldredge, N (1977). Punctuated equilibria: The tempo and mode of evolution reconsidered.
Paleobiology 3:115-151.