Adaptive evolution as a biological analogue of sustainable energy technologies

Voronezh State Technical University, 394026, Russia

^* Corresponding author: vgtu-aits@yandex.ru

Abstract

An analogy is drawn between complex energy technologies and the evolution of biological structures. The subject is a general property of the variety of biological and ecological systems providing their existence and development in the conditions of critical changes of the external environment. The mechanisms of realization of this variety are formulated as principles: the multilevelness of both the structure and functioning of these systems; variety and division of functions, modularity of their components. At the pre-biological stage of the emergence of life as a phenomenon, these principles did not allow the overwhelming domination of any unique type of macromolecules and provided their joint, yet competing development. At the level of populations, the evolution can originate only if the speed of their internal accumulation of genetic variety surpasses the speed of a stream of events in the changing environmental conditions. In ecological systems, the stability of evolutionary processes is provided due to the internal formation of the multilevel hierarchical structure, which is combined with the variety of individual adaptive functions of different types at each level of an ecosystem. The concept of multialternativity offered as a way of understanding the mechanisms of evolution and adaptation in living organisms gives the opportunity of purposeful reproducing these mechanisms in the control systems of complex energy objects and increasing the stability of their functioning.