Autotrophism

Autotrophism provided a new mechanism for understanding how matter migrated between nature's inorganic and organic realms in terms of the activity of living beings.

These definitions delineate the main features of autotrophism versus heterotrophism but some supplementary points are instructive.

Firstly, that ab origine the adaptation to autotrophism already implies, even in the single autotrophes, a metabolic divergence, one of whose branches culminates in the fundamental reaction of protoplasm (in the individual's maintenance, growth, and reproduction), and the other branch in something equivalent to this fundamental reaction: the temporary fixing in the protoplasmic soma of the excess energy.