Evolution (IC)

[Photana]

(OOC/Signup thread: http://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic.php?f=31&t=200190

Life. One of the most certain aspects of the universe. Recently (In geological terms), life started on a distant star's planet. Or rather, started again. For you see, this planet's life had been wiped out more than once. On one occasion, it wiped itself out! But that was a very long time ago. All remnants of that civilization are long gone, lost to the annals of the geological process. This planet is not native to this star, but it was instead spared the fate of dieing to it's home star by the very civilization that wiped out life on it's surface. Deep inside the planet, lava still churns, and the core still turns, producing a magnetic sphere to protect the surface. Life can start again, but will it learn from the past, or repeat the mistakes of it's forefathers?

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The Comedenti Chemophage were bottom feeders. They could only live near the hydro thermal vents, lest they starve. Their form is basic, with only a Nucleus and a few organelles to digest the chemicals that gave them the energy to survive and reproduce. They only had a cell membrane to protect them, but at these depths, they were probably the only living thing.

[Shnercropolis]

Vita Tuus, Vituus for short, was confined to some shallow freshwater pools along the ocean. They were a true marvel of protobiology. Vitatuus possessed no organelles and a single-helix RNA for reproduction. They looked like little tubes, with very strong crystalline shells around all areas but the two ends of the tube, where a very simple membrane monitored the intake and output of proteins and waste. The internal structure was cluttered with proteins, which broke down non-native proteins into amino acids, which were then built into more proteins by other macroproteins. Excess materials were either pooped out or, in the case of sulfur and calcium, added it to their walls. The Vituus found that life in the pools was hard; it took as many as 209 hours to reproduce and proteins were scarce. They had to process whatever their much larger cousins, the microbes, left behind.
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A Vituus floated in the water. Little did it know, but the little protobiote had been snapped up by a cell membrane, which confused it for a small microbe to eat. The cell found that the strong wall was not edible by its enzymes. Suddenly a rush of proteins streamed into the little life-form. The membrane soon had to shut itself to keep the essential deconstruction and construction proteins within from being destroyed. Well, that and the membrane simply was not strong enough to handle that much flow for long without breaking. After a few hours the Vituus was doing quite well and its RNA was almost ready to replicate; it had accumulated a bulk of essential proteins and a few replication molecules, and the building macroproteins that were essential to the life of a organelle-free protobiote were completed. A few special proteins that managed the membrane strengthened and lengthened the membrane. Then, special proteins that managed the wall started taking out chunks of crystallized sulphur&calcium and extending the wall as the reproduction molecules started duplicating the RNA and ferrying it to where the protobiote was expanding, along with the important proteins. In only a few minutes, the tube looked like two tubes joined together. The two tubes stayed linked for a minute while the RNA did the only purpose it would ever do, which was to create small proteins and molecules to be binded together by the macroproteins. The finishing touches were put on the membrane and the parent Vituus emptied some excess proteins into its child, and the two separated.

Within weeks, the old Vituuses died out and the only Vituuses left lived inside of bacteria and processed the nutrients when the cell eventually died, then floated and waited for another host.

[Asterdan]

The Tigrerria Vulpimantis lived in the mud on the banks of shallow pools. The Tigrerria had basic organelles, actual RNA and DNA floating within a nucleas, along with ribosomes floating in the cytoplasm. The ribosomes were organized in such a way that if you didn't look carefully, you would think it had stripes.

The Tigrerria squirmed around in the mud, waiting for a microbe to slither by so it could be eaten by the superior Vulpimantis. However, it would find that some, he would not be able to digest, and that eventually it form symbiotic relations with them.