In many cellular organisms, genes can be either essential or non-essential. It seems obvious for people to argue for the origin of essentiality. From the network work aging perspective, the non-essential genes actually are the key for the characteristics of biological aging. The exponential viability curves of viruses suggest that every viral gene is essential. Hence, evolutionary transition from simple viruses to cellular organisms is to add non-essential genes, because essentiality predates the cellular life. Presumably, essentiality exists in the RNA world. It is the non-essential genes that give redundancy and robustness to gene networks which manifested themselves as the increasing mortality rate over time. Hence, the non-essential genes play much larger roles than essential genes with regards to diversity and innovations. In a way, this argument is related to Ohno's duplication argument.
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