concept

Abiogenesis

The emergence of life from non-living matter — not a single event but a chain of six distinct problems: making the monomers, joining them into chains, copying a sequence faithfully, wrapping it all in a compartment, coupling the system to a continuous energy source, and finally crossing the threshold into a population that evolves. Solving one step is not solving the whole; no continuous route from geochemistry to a Darwinian cell has yet been demonstrated end to end.