A recent special issue of Philosophical Transactions B addresses the question of how life originated, focusing on universal principles rather than the specific history of Earth. The contributors seek to identify general rules involving energy, chemistry, and information that could make life possible elsewhere in the universe.
“This is part of a broader effort to uncover general laws of biological organization,” said Ricard Solé, an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute and director of the Complex Systems Lab at Universitat Pompeu Fabra. “We wanted to bring together researchers from physics, chemistry, biology, and even astrobiology to ask what life can be — not just what it was on Earth.”
The issue compiles research that approaches the origins of life from various perspectives. Some papers investigate protocells—simple bubble-like structures thought to be early containers for living systems. Others examine phase transitions similar to those seen when water freezes or boils, proposing that such shifts could explain how basic molecules organized into living entities.
“What’s exciting about this issue is that it takes ideas that were once abstract and turns them into things we can actually test,” said Chris Kempes, a professor at the Santa Fe Institute. Kempes contributed a paper examining encapsulation: “You can’t always bottle a metabolism,” he explained. “We outline the physical limits — how big the molecules can be, how fast reactions must run, how quickly material leaks away — that determine whether a cell can even exist.”
Other studies use thermodynamics and evolutionary theory to analyze how primitive chemical systems might have become organized or use synthetic biology experiments in laboratories to recreate parts of this process. Artificial intelligence is also being used as a tool for exploring potential chemical pathways but is not intended as a replacement for scientists.
Solé noted that progress in understanding life's origins will rely on connecting theoretical models with experimental data: “As in cosmology,” he said, “progress will come from the back-and-forth between models and measurements — until we can explain not just how life began here, but how it could begin anywhere.”
