On the origin of life: What Darwin would have liked to know

Although Darwin consciously avoided discussing the origin of life in most of his books, an analysis of some other texts he published and the correspondence he exchanged with friends and colleagues demonstrates that he took for granted the possibility of a natural emergence of the first life forms. Although he favored the possibility that life could appear by natural processes from simple inorganic compounds, his reluctance to discuss the issue resulted from his recognition that times were not ripe to undertake the experimental study of the emergence of life. After 150 years, advances in biology, geology, chemistry or astronomy have allowed us to elaborate models and hypotheses within the framework of the evolutionary theory on the origin of life proposed by Oparin. About 4 billion years ago, a rich inventory of organic compounds accumulated on the Earth, as a product of volcanic, atmospheric, and cosmic chemistry. During the emergence of chemical complexity, a critical point was reached with the invention of replicative polymers and, hence, the addition of natural selection to a deterministic abiotic chemistry. These genetic polymers appeared in the context of a protometabolism encapsulated within lipid vesicles. The landmark of the origin of life was the harmonious articulation of suprachemical (or infrabiological) systems, like membranes, metabolism and replicative polymers, under the conditions of the primitive Earth. Albeit most details still remain unknown, the processes involved in the emergence of life are scientifically comprehensible and experimentally reproducible. Reference: Peretó, J., Bada, J, and Lazcano, A. (2009) Charles Darwin and the origin of life. Orig. Life Evol. Biosph. 39(5): 395-406.

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