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GRADIENT OF LIFE. "The hypothesis that the origin of life may have proceeded stepwise through states of partial ‘aliveness’, which is the obvious consequence of a scientific view that a sharp transition is not physically realizable because of its improbability, is therefore sufficient to outline the nature of the process leading to life as we know it, one grounded solely on established laws of physics and chemistry." https://lnkd.in/dS2NY3q View in LinkedIn

LIVING OS. "Now, there are moves afoot to get the same code-Windows, or Windows CE, or Windows NT or whatever, not to mention underlying protocols-running everywhere. The thing is, it's happening. Which is very much what's gone on in the world of biology. In biology there is one operating system, and it's the one we're stuck with-the DNA/RNA operating system. All living organisms, with very rare exceptions, run that same system." https://lnkd.in/dVwXzv5 View in LinkedIn

HYPOTHETICAL OPTIONS. "Either Monod was right, life emerged as a consequence of an event that had almost no chance to occur during the lifetime of the universe, or the emergence of life is not a mere question of the probability of a single event, but a driving force exists—and can thus be discovered—to drive this process through its various stages." https://lnkd.in/dS2NY3q View in LinkedIn

DIRECTING EVOLUTION. "In the past year or so, researchers have discovered that the bacterial system can be harnessed to make precise changes to the DNA of humans, as well as other animals and plants. This means a genome can be edited, much as a writer might change words or fix spelling errors. It allows “customizing the genome of any cell or any species at will." https://lnkd.in/dC-NM-E View in LinkedIn

NUMBING NUMBERS. "If we consider now that a sequence made up of 100 monomers was needed for a ribozyme to have the wide range of activity allowing the polymerization of the four ribonucleotides, the probability of one single sequence would be reduced to 0.6×10(–60) and synthesizing all of them in one molecular unit over 1 billion years would lead to the synthesis of a mass of nucleic acid representing several tens that of the Earth per day." https://lnkd.in/dS2NY3q View in LinkedIn

NUCLEIC ACID PROBABILITY. "The random formation of biopolymeric components, for instance nucleic acids, from their building blocks. The probability of a single sequence of 50 nucleotides among all possibilities corresponds to 1/4(50) ≈ 0.8×10(-30) meaning that the exploration of the complete set of sequences over 1 billion years would require the synthesis of more than 4 ×10(13) different sequences every second." https://lnkd.in/dS2NY3q View in LinkedIn

HIGHLY UNLIKELY EVENT. "A sudden transition in a system from an inanimate state to the living state—defined on the basis of present day living organisms—would constitute a highly unlikely event hardly predictable from physical laws." https://lnkd.in/dS2NY3q View in LinkedIn

CONVERGENT. "Simon Conway Morris argues that convergence is the stronger force – the principles of engineering dictate that the same, or similar, solutions will emerge repeatedly." https://lnkd.in/dtE8XQK View in LinkedIn

CONTINGENT. "Steven Jay Gould advocated the contingency of evolution: wind back the clock, and life will evolve again along radically different lines." https://lnkd.in/dtE8XQK View in LinkedIn

FREAK ACCIDENT. "Forty years ago, Jacques Monod published his seminal work, Chance and Necessity (Monod, 1971). Monod's bleak perspective, that the origin of life was a freak accident, and that we are almost certainly alone in an empty universe, was opposed by Christian de Duve, who has argued that life is a "cosmic imperative", and as such will arise throughout the universe." https://lnkd.in/dtE8XQK View in LinkedIn