
Dividing Droplets Could Explain Origin of Life - eaguyhn
https://www.quantamagazine.org/dividing-droplets-could-explain-origin-of-life-20170119/
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eddhead
I wrote a simulation that kinda behaved like this, without explicit code that
actually started to behave like a lifeform about 8 years ago, here's a video
[https://youtu.be/OXceSiSEXIM](https://youtu.be/OXceSiSEXIM)

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ksaj
The course "Origins of Life"
([https://www.complexityexplorer.org/courses/95-origins-of-
lif...](https://www.complexityexplorer.org/courses/95-origins-of-life)) covers
this idea quite a bit. It's not a new idea, but so far of course, nobody has
created new life this way. We're working on it.

The general premise is that cells began organizing when a lipid membrane was
formed that was hydrophobic on the outside, and hydrophilic on the inside
(like every drop of oil in water). Many current examples do demonstrate
features that are reminiscent of life, and so the study is to improve on these
materials, in the hopes that eventually we figure out what happened to make
them "spark" to life.

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petjuh
I like this idea because it is a membrane-first type of scenario. I've always
thought the idea of naked molecules replicating outside of an enclosed space
to be unlikely. It is likely that membranes were there from the very
beginning, and there was never a phase where you just have molecules
replicating in the open ocean without a cell to enclose them.

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jcims
Title bugs me because there’s a lot more ‘splainin to do, but discoveries like
these do create little islands of plausibility that may connect in the future.

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_Microft
There is an interesting theory that a gradual process of increasing complexity
of autocatalytic processes might be more probable to lead to something like
life than a sudden abiogenesis event and that there might have been no single
event that could be called the beginning of life.

Here is an (accessible?) article on it:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3843823/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3843823/)

One of the authors (Addy Pross) even wrote a book called _What is Life - How
Chemistry becomes Biology_ about this idea ([https://www.amazon.de/What-Life-
Chemistry-Becomes-Landmark/d...](https://www.amazon.de/What-Life-Chemistry-
Becomes-Landmark/dp/0198784791/) ). There's a review of the book at this link
[PDF]:
[https://www.pagepress.org/journals/index.php/eb/article/view...](https://www.pagepress.org/journals/index.php/eb/article/viewFile/eb.2013.br1/3833)

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jcims
Will check those out, thank you.

I can't fathom the odds of a sudden abiogenesis event. If that truly is the
source, this can't have been the first cycle of the universe and we are almost
certainly the only germline that exists.

It would have to be an undisturbed progression of natural reactions that
culminate in what we know as life. It likewise seems very unlikely, but if
that happens life is probably all over the universe and still looks a lot like
us.

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artsyca
It's perhaps a well-known tidbit of computer history that Alan Turing devoted
much effort to the study of Biology and the explanation of the 'algorithmic'
nature of life i.e. how protein synthesis could extrapolate to the stripes of
a zebra for example; this seems to be the induction step 0 that would bring it
all together

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TCR19
Gives the quote "Thousands have lived without love. Not one without water” a
whole new meaning.

