These are good comments and resources; thanks! I'm a bit out of my depth in the papers, but reading through them gradually and trying to absorb them. Again, p

These are good comments and resources; thanks! I'm a bit out of my depth in the papers, but reading through them gradually and trying to absorb them. Again, please bear with me--this is not an area in which I have much experience. A couple quick follow-ups on your thoughts, though: > Broadly, I think it is fair to say that many molecules that we associate with biological processes (e.g. amino acids, nucleotides, simple alcohols, etc.) do come "for free" in the sense that there are known pathways for these molecules to be produced in the absence of living organisms. How likely are the conditions for such pathways to obtain? At a minimum it seems like you need the constituent elements to be collocated and for appropriate environmental conditions to occur. In order- or structure-sensitive reactions, is it true that further conditions need to be met? (Unless the argument advanced is that these challenges are addressed by a (somewhat?) deterministic process that results in appropriate chirality of molecules?) Is there a substrate or solvent in which these reactions are postulated to have occurred? The challenges with the primordial soup hypothesis, as described in the first paper, are fairly well known to me...but the reactions have to take place in some kind of an environment. The obvious solvent is water, or you could imagine some other viscous substrate (like clay?); are there other candidates? Or are these questions just terribly ignorant? > > How many steps do you have to take from self replication to functional cells? > Not many; I would say that if you have something that looks like a cell and reproduces itself, it's a "functional cell." How would we measure what "looks like" means? Through functional analysis (like metabolic action?) or constituent parts (e.g., we differentiate eukaryotes and prokaryotes but consider both cells--is there something distinct from prokaryotes that we would also consider a cell?)? > Let me know if you're curious about any other aspect of this topic and I'll try to provide more info! I'm super interested. Do you have a set of base references that are your go-to sources for reacquainting yourself with these things? I'd love to keep reading.