Prebiotic chemistry aims to explain how the biochemistry of life as we know it came to be.
Most efforts in this area have focused on provisioning compounds of importance to life by …

How and where did life on Earth originate? To date, various environments have been
proposed as plausible sites for the origin of life. However, discussions have focused on a …

The concept of a last universal common ancestor of all cells (LUCA, or the progenote) is
central to the study of early evolution and life's origin, yet information about how and where …

The origin of life is a fascinating, unresolved problem whose deciphering would have
important scientific, epistemological and social implications. Over time, philosophers and …

The general notion of an “RNA world” is that, in the early development of life on the Earth,
genetic continuity was assured by the replication of RNA, and RNA molecules were the chief …

Artificial cells have attracted much attention as substitutes for natural cells. There are many
different forms of artificial cells with many different definitions. They can be integral biological …

The design and construction of integrated chemical ensembles for studying complex
biological systems is attracting considerable interest in a wide range of research …

The bottom‐up construction of a synthetic cell from nonliving building blocks capable of
mimicking cellular properties and behaviors helps to understand the particular biophysical …

If we were to point out in a few words what characterises the phenomenon of life, we would
probably mention the amazing plasticity and robustness of living systems, the innumerable …

Protocells at life's origin are often conceived as bilayer-enclosed precursors of life, whose
self-reproduction rests on the early advent of replicating catalytic biopolymers. This …