Before DNA: How Life Learned to Regulate Before It Learned to Store Information

By Emile S. van der Merwe

Before DNA revisits one of biology's deepest assumptions: that life began with a code.

For decades, the origin of life has been framed as a problem of information-how molecules learned to replicate, store instructions, and evolve. But a code cannot function without stability, and chemistry cannot persist if energy overwhelms it.

For the first time, life is examined from a regulation-first perspective - showing how stability, buffering, reconstruction, and prediction arise as physical necessities rather than evolutionary accidents.

Drawing on thermodynamics, control theory, and modern physiology, Before DNA traces a continuous logic from prebiotic chemistry to living systems, biological diversity, and the emergence of mind. It reframes DNA not as a blueprint, but as a reconstruction constraint; explains why bacteria, fungi, plants, and animals represent distinct regulatory architectures; and shows how prediction, self-reference, and awareness arise when regulation turns inward.

This perspective reshapes long-standing questions across disciplines:

Origin of Life: from rare events to enduring architectures

Biology: from lineage and genes to feasibility and constraint

Medicine: disease as loss of regulatory coherence

Mind: awareness as regulation made internal

Astrobiology: life as sustained, buffered energy flow

Before DNA does not add mystery to life. It removes it-revealing a quiet, universal coherence beneath living systems.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GDLNCHR6
• ISBN13: 9798242114678
• Release Date: January 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 244 Pages
• Weight: 0.73 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"