From Chemical Communities to Genetic Systems: The Synechite Framework for the Emergence of Biological Information

How prebiotic chemistry became capable of stable heredity and cumulative evolution before mature genetic systems emerged remains a central problem in origin-of-life research. The Synechite framework proposes a systems-level pathway in which hereditary continuity develops from persistent chemical organization within dynamically maintained physicochemical systems, rather than appearing first as a property of an isolated replicating molecule. A Synechite is defined by organizational continuity despite molecular turnover, material exchange, environmental variation, and reorganization. Within such organizations, compositional memory can arise when retained, accumulated, redistributed, or reorganized chemical components and relationships preserve a historically contingent influence on subsequent states. Through differential persistence, material exchange, environmental coupling, and cumulative reorganization, such influence may become increasingly transferable and evolutionarily significant. Physical stabilization may further strengthen persistence through structures, interfaces, boundaries, or other features that provide sufficient retention, protection, or regulated exchange under particular physicochemical conditions. Sequence-dependent polymers are therefore interpreted not as the first appearance of biological information, but as increasingly precise mechanisms for preserving and transmitting particular forms of organization within already evolving chemical systems. Compositional and sequence-based memory may coexist and reciprocally reorganize one another before high-fidelity genetic heredity becomes dominant. The framework does not propose a single obligatory historical sequence; different organizational regimes may overlap, branch, disappear, or re-emerge under changing conditions. Instead, it defines experimentally accessible transitions linking chemical organization, persistence, memory, hereditary continuity, physical stabilization, cumulative evolution, and sequence-based heredity. The Synechite framework thus offers a testable organizational bridge between prebiotic chemistry and genetic systems while remaining open to multiple environmental pathways and forms of early evolutionary organization.