Origin of Life, Theories Of

Modern advances in biology, geology, chemistry, and astronomy have allowed us to elaborate models and hypotheses on the origin of life on Earth within the framework of the evolutionary theory. About four billion years ago, a rich inventory of organic compounds accumulated on the planet, as a product of volcanic, atmospheric, and cosmic chemistry. As chemical systems became increasingly more complex, a critical point was reached with the appearance of self-replicative polymers. This marks the possibility of optimizing abiotic systems by natural selection and historical contingency, which were added to the determinism of abiotic chemistry. A landmark of the origin of life was the articulation of suprachemical systems, such as self-reproductive vesicles, self-maintained chemical networks, and self-replicative polymers, under the conditions of the primitive Earth. Albeit most details remain unknown, the stepwise processes involved in the origin of life are scientifically comprehensible and experimentally reproducible.