ReviewOpen biology2013
The origin of life: what we know, what we can know and what we will never know.
Review in Open biology, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 31 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
31 citing papers in PubMed.
- Experimental evolution toward extinction in a molecular host-parasite system.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Article
- Science of the gaps.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Can the origin of biosynthetic routes be explained by a Frankenstein's monster-like spontaneous assembly of prebiotic reactants?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Alternative Pathways in Astrobiology: Reviewing and Synthesizing Contingency and Non-Biomolecular Origins of Terrestrial and Extraterrestrial Life.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Editorial: Last universal common ancestor and origin of life: what uncultivated Bacteria, Archaea, and extremophiles can tell us.Frontiers in microbiology · 2024Article
- Electron transport chains as a window into the earliest stages of evolution.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Article
- On the Chemical Origin of Biological Cognition.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Potassium at the Origins of Life: Did Biology Emerge from Biotite in Micaceous Clay?Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Selection between Competing Self-Reproducing Lipids: Succession and Dynamic Activation.JACS Au · 2021Article
- Neutrino intergalactic communication, metal life, and viruses: Part 1 quo vadis ex machina.Bioinformation · 2021Article
- Cell Communications among Microorganisms, Plants, and Animals: Origin, Evolution, and Interplays.International journal of molecular sciences · 2020Review
- Law of Mass Action Type Chemical Mechanisms for Modeling Autocatalysis and Hypercycles: Their Role in the Evolutionary Race.Chemphyschem : a European journal of chemical physics and physical chemistry · 2020Article
- Extracellular ionic fluxes suggest the basis for cellular life at the 1/f ridge of extended criticality.European biophysics journal : EBJ · 2020Article
- Emerging Frontiers in the Study of Molecular Evolution.Journal of molecular evolution · 2020Article
- Exploiting limited valence patchy particles to understand autocatalytic kinetics.Nature communications · 2018Article
- Primordial sex facilitates the emergence of evolution.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2018Article
- An Experimental Framework for Generating Evolvable Chemical Systems in the Laboratory.Origins of life and evolution of the biosphere : the journal of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life · 2017Article
- Chemical roots of biological evolution: the origins of life as a process of development of autonomous functional systems.Open biology · 2017Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The origin of life (OOL) problem remains one of the more challenging scientific questions of all time. In this essay, we propose that following recent experimental and theoretical advances in systems chemistry, the underlying principle governing the emergence of life on the Earth can in its broadest sense be specified, and may be stated as follows: all stable (persistent) replicating systems will tend to evolve over time towards systems of greater stability. The stability kind referred to, however, is dynamic kinetic stability, and quite distinct from the traditional thermodynamic stability which conventionally dominates physical and chemical thinking. Significantly, that stability kind is generally found to be enhanced by increasing complexification, since added features in the replicating system that improve replication efficiency will be reproduced, thereby offering an explanation for the emergence of life's extraordinary complexity. On the basis of that simple principle, a fundamental reassessment of the underlying chemistry-biology relationship is possible, one with broad ramifications. In the context of the OOL question, this novel perspective can assist in clarifying central ahistoric aspects of abiogenesis, as opposed to the many historic aspects that have probably been forever lost in the mists of time.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.