Molecules form a 'lifelike' ecosystem...

[Steerpike]

See this link

Pretty cool stuff.

 

[Old Rocks]

Thank you. Very good article. There was an article several years ago, in Nature I believe, that was called "On the Other Hand". It concerned chirality, and how it started. Seems that the cavities in feldspars form the perfect habitat for lipeds to form double layers, much like what the present cell walls look like. And there is a tendency for the chemicals in the enclosures to develop a chirality. Fascinating hypothesis that give insight into possible paths of abiogenisis.

 

[Steerpike]

I remember that article on chirality. That was also cool.

Back in the mid-1990s a german scientist named Manfred Eigen wrote a book called "Steps Toward Life." That book is also quite interesting, and deals in part with population distributions and quasi-species (I think that's the term he used) and how you can get a fairly dramatic population shift in response to a change in conditions. Very interesting book.