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METABOLISM-FIRST CAMP. "There are two camps in the origin of life. The metabolism-first camp advocates consider improbable that RNA-like self-replicating polymers appeared before natural selection had operated on chemical networks." https://lnkd.in/euzMX5X View in LinkedIn

DEATH OR REPLICATION. "Natural selection is a mechanism by which populations adapt and evolve. In its essence, it is a simple statement about rates of reproduction and mortality: Those individual organisms who happen to be best suited to an environment survive and reproduce most successfully, producing many similarly well-adapted descendants." Impressive. https://lnkd.in/eaizZgz View in LinkedIn

SELECTIVE PROCESS. "Natural selection is the gradual, non-random process by which genetically inherited traits (alleles) become either more or less common in a population due to non-random differences in the effective reproductive rate of bearers of these genetic traits." https://lnkd.in/eS_4y_J View in LinkedIn

POOR MAN'S NATURAL SELECTION. "Acquisition of cores by rare chemical events, and loss of cores at division, allows macromutation, limited heredity and selectability, thus explaining how a poor man's natural selection could have operated prior to genetic templates." https://lnkd.in/euzMX5X View in LinkedIn

CHEMICAL NETWORK CORES. "When many cores are enclosed in a compartment there is competition between cores within the same compartment, and when there are many compartments, there is between-compartment competition due to the phenotypic effects of cores and their periphery at the compartment level." https://lnkd.in/euzMX5X View in LinkedIn

CHEMICAL BESTIARY. "We conclude that only when a chemical reaction network consists of many such viable cores, can it be evolvable." https://lnkd.in/euzMX5X View in LinkedIn

ADAPTING CHEMICAL NETWORKS. "We cannot confirm previous claims that autocatalytic sets of organic polymer molecules could undergo evolution in any interesting sense by themselves. Instead, we discovered that if general conditions are satisfied, the accumulation of adaptations in chemical reaction networks can occur. These conditions are the existence of rare reactions producing viable cores (analogous to a genotype), that sustains a molecular periphery (analogous to a phenotype)." https://lnkd.in/euzMX5X View in LinkedIn

MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS. "However, using the minimal model of polymer chemistry as a popular example, we outline the very general requirements that enable reaction networks to act as units of evolution, whatever the underlying chemistry used." https://lnkd.in/euzMX5X View in LinkedIn

WE ARE MADE OF STARS. “More than ninety percent of the universe is composed of hydrogen and helium. Both elements have been around since shortly after the beginning of the universe.” https://lnkd.in/dK6WMcp View in LinkedIn

UNLIKELY OUTCOME. "Can autocatalytic sets, as originally conceived, be units of evolution? Our answer is no." https://lnkd.in/euzMX5X View in LinkedIn