Jacob, you wrote,

Complex proteins have three dimensions, configuring a net of self-interconnections. Their electromagnetic properties make them powerful in their specific functions of acting on other molecules. In this regard, they consitute the principle of life.

Who made the statement that complex proteins constitute the principle of life?

David, since genes are 'blueprints' for the production of only proteins, these are the principle of life: not lipids or carbohydrates. Genes could not have been created before their results, the proteins. Aminoacids, then proteins --and of them, enzymes-- allowed for the creation of genes. (Alternatively, enzymatic RNA could have been the ancient 'principle of life.')

But only complex proteins can do the complex activities required for the evolution of living organisms. Thanks to them DNA, and then genes, were formed, and further on, the first monocellular organism was evolved: a prokaryote, the first life form.

At a given moment in a late stage of the Earth, a protein formed spontaneously, that is, through accidental chemical processes, by the slow, non-enzymatic aggregation of aminoacids (after they themselves had formed spontaneously). Thus, a protein was 'born.'
Such simple protein continued very slowly adding aninoacids, until an enzyme, a 'complex protein,' resulted (the protein 'grew.').
Now many new proteins could be rapidly created (the complex protein 'reproduced,' and therefore could be now truly considered as 'alive.'
Proteins are eventually destroyed by normal wear (they 'die').

These four physico-chemical processes constituted the first 'principle of life.' Dying, nowadays refers to the disintegration of the processes that allow an organism to function as a whole.