Open Questions on the Origin of Life (OQOL)--introduction to the special issue.

Abstract

The question about the origin of life is still largely unanswered, is in fact one of the great mysteries that science is still facing. We all accept the 1924 idea of Oparin, according to which life originated from the inanimate matter through a long series of steps of increasing molecular complexity and functionality. And we accept also that the first real experimental mile stone came 1953 with Stanley Miller’ flask, showing that amino acids can be formed under prebiotic conditions from a mixture of gas presumably present in the prebiotic atmosphere. Since then, several beautiful data have been presented-but have we had real conceptual progress? Do we now understand more or better how life made its way through the “inanimate” molecules? Maybe yes, but arguably, as there are still different points of view, often in sharp competition with each other, to propose an answer-and the very fact that there is no single, unifying vision, indicates the obvious, that the real answer has not yet been given. This situation is not due to shortage of good people and/or finances in the field so, we may perhaps ask: have we not always been addressing the right questions in the field? To look inside this last question was the aim of the OQOL workshop, which took place at the IIAS (International Institute for Advanced Studies) in Kizugawa, Kyoto, Japan from 12–13 July, 2014, at the end of the ORIGINS 2014 conference in Nara. In fact, while the larger ORIGINS meeting should shed light on new results and progress, the purpose of the OQOL workshop was to focus instead on the shadowy, un-answered aspects of the field. Questions we forget to ask, or that, for various reasons, remain in our drawers. For example: how to make ordered macromolecular sequences in many identical copies under prebiotic conditions? How do you go from a prebiotic chemical scenario containing only ten basic amino acids to a first form of biochemical metabolism? How do you go from the chemistry under thermodynamic control (as in the production of Miller’ amino acids) to the chemistry of kinetic control, which necessitates catalysts? Did the hypothesis of the prebiotic RNA-world produce any significant fact for understanding the origin of life? Orig Life Evol Biosph (2014) 44:267–268 DOI 10.1007/s11084-014-9391-4