I'd heard of the RNA world, but I hadn't realized that there were so many other competing molecules and that the new trend in the field moved on entirely from single biologically known molecules, to mixes of molecules or less 'living' objects. I think it's interesting to see how a scientific field tries different things when they get stuck.
It is just amazing that while we know the constituents of all earthly matter (made up from the elements of the periodic table) to a high degree of precision we still don't have a definite idea of how they give rise to "Life" (the definition itself is problematic). Molecular systems undergoing chemical processes somehow give rise to "Biology".
As the article says, "Life" needs a "compartment" (i.e. cell) to begin and grow. It must hold 1) a mechanism to store information (for further propagation) 2) a mechanism to generate energy and do work 3) a mechanism to evolve further. variations.
You start with a chemical soup with various elements/molecules/ions in various levels of concentration, provide energy to the system to encourage reactions and see what happens.
Applying "Complex Systems Science" theories tells us that at a certain scale and with right set of conditions a "primordial cell" maybe formed. Note that there might be multiple types of these cells.
Once this happened it started influencing the very chemical reactions in which it could participate using feedback loops i.e. starts exhibiting "functions/behaviours". To understand this part, i found the book Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology by Valentino Braitenberg which shows how "complex perceived behaviour" can arise from extremely simple rules, useful.
Add "survival of the fittest" over time and you get to where we are today.
I'd heard of the RNA world, but I hadn't realized that there were so many other competing molecules and that the new trend in the field moved on entirely from single biologically known molecules, to mixes of molecules or less 'living' objects. I think it's interesting to see how a scientific field tries different things when they get stuck.
What is life and the property of being living a subset of? What broader concept consistently generalises life?
Without a determination of whether the above question is meaningful, the field of biology shall have no foundations - George C. Williams
There are some attempts to define life based on maintaining entropy gradients and reproduction that are fairly general.
Good article, longish but worth the read.
It is just amazing that while we know the constituents of all earthly matter (made up from the elements of the periodic table) to a high degree of precision we still don't have a definite idea of how they give rise to "Life" (the definition itself is problematic). Molecular systems undergoing chemical processes somehow give rise to "Biology".
As the article says, "Life" needs a "compartment" (i.e. cell) to begin and grow. It must hold 1) a mechanism to store information (for further propagation) 2) a mechanism to generate energy and do work 3) a mechanism to evolve further. variations.
You start with a chemical soup with various elements/molecules/ions in various levels of concentration, provide energy to the system to encourage reactions and see what happens.
Applying "Complex Systems Science" theories tells us that at a certain scale and with right set of conditions a "primordial cell" maybe formed. Note that there might be multiple types of these cells.
Once this happened it started influencing the very chemical reactions in which it could participate using feedback loops i.e. starts exhibiting "functions/behaviours". To understand this part, i found the book Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology by Valentino Braitenberg which shows how "complex perceived behaviour" can arise from extremely simple rules, useful.
Add "survival of the fittest" over time and you get to where we are today.
This article is part of a series on the origins of life by Quanta magazine:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/tag/origins-of-life-week/