The Emergence of Life: From Chemical Origins to Synthetic Biology

Thus, one can say that all most important theories of the origin of life are lacking in the fundamental ingredient: the biogenesis of macromolecular order.

Reproduction is a property of life; it does not say anything about why and how an organism is alive.

common denominator of life in all living organisms. When we say, “the living is an open, self-maintaining molecular system due to self-regeneration of the components within a boundary of its own making,”

the overcrowding effect has the power of increasing the local concentration by an order of magnitude with respect to the bulk. Reaction outside does not take place because of the excessive dilution,

the macromolecules attract each other and the more they do so, the higher is their initial number inside a closing compartment.

It is not clear now why and how the phenomenon of spontaneous overcrowding takes place, but a few groups are working on this.

From one general, philosophical point of view, this kind of questioning (why this and not that?) links to the dichotomy between determinism and contingency: are the things of nature the way they are, simply because there were no other ways to make them (“absolute determinism”)? Alternatively, are they the way they are, due to contingency – somethin

“why did nature do things in a certain way, and not in another one?” Why 20 amino acids, and not 15, or 55? Why do nucleic acids contain ribose instead of glucose? Must mammalian hemoglobin be constituted by four chains, why not six or twelve? Why didn’t nature make much simpler cells?

biological systems.”