To me, one thing was clear: multicellularity begins with the differentiation of cells. It is precisely at this point that the simplest multicellular organism emerges. From there, integration intensifies, leading to the development of tissues, organs, and functional systems of organs and tissues. Unlike I.S. Shklovsky (or rather his later views), I believed that the emergence of intelligent life was as inevitable as the emergence of chemical reactions and biological life.

But what is intelligence in relation to life? In my view, the key moment was the emergence of intelligence within a multicellular organism. The reproduction of chemical compartments was the first property that life acquired beyond chemical transformations. The second property was the differentiation of compartments, followed by their integration into tissues, organs, and organisms, with biochemical processes now permeating all of these biological systems. Vernadsky proposed the idea of the "ubiquity" of life: living matter is capable of spreading across the surface of the planet. It rapidly occupies all unclaimed areas of the biosphere, creating pressure on non-living nature.

Life, as an ordered system of chemical reactions, gave rise to self-replication, differentiation, and integration of biochemical systems that could no longer be reduced solely to chemical processes, even though all these properties of life remained inseparable from ordered chemical reactions. The diversity of material forms that emerged through systems of ordered chemical reactions is immense, and the number of new organic chemical compounds has grown exponentially. Over its existence, these systems have transformed the atmosphere, lithosphere, and hydrosphere, influenced continental drift, and much more [5], providing rich material for scientists to develop fields like paleontology, paleogenetics, evolutionary biochemistry, biogeochemistry, evolutionary theory, and many other disciplines. It should be noted that without the physics of electrons in the atoms of chemical elements, chemical reactions would not be possible. However, molecules and supramolecular structures cannot be reduced solely to the energy states of electrons in atoms.

The next property of life, which emerged specifically in multicellular organisms, was intercellular interactions – humoral and electrical, functioning as signals. The development of specialized areas sensitive to these signals – receptors, channels, and later synapses – marked a significant step. Nervous tissue, which in many higher organisms divides very little or not at all, devotes its entire resource to intercellular interactions – both electrical and chemical. Where mitosis is absent, electrogenesistakes precedence.

Much later, together with Professor A.M. Seledtsov, I co-authored an article for a student collection titled "Calcium Ions, cerebral paroxysms, epileptogenesis, mitosis, and apoptosis"[13]. At the time, we hypothesized that the calcium-calmodulin complex and nitric oxide are among the most ancient intracellular messengers. One of the most critical functions of calcium ion regulation in the nervous system is its role in apoptosis. Some effects of calcium ions on nervous tissue are temporally organized in a paroxysmal manner, primarily concerning pathological phenomena (epileptic paroxysms, the activation of pathological cravings for alcohol). Despite existing cellular calcium defenses, vertebrates – with their calcium-based skeletons – are prone to numerous pathological processes where hypercalcicity (an elevated concentration of calcium ions within the cell) plays a key role. These processes are temporally organized either paroxysmally (e.g., epileptic seizures, activation of alcohol cravings, certain cardiac arrhythmias) or non-paroxysmally (e.g., affective disorders, arterial hypertension).