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Origin of Life: RNA World versus Autocatalytic Anabolism

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The Prokaryotes

Introduction

The deep past of the earth is unobservable. Therefore, the problem of the origin of life, the emergence of the first evolvable entity, which is the primordial ancestor of all extant organisms, can only be solved by a theory. Theories on the origin of life are scientific rather than myth, if they have empirical significance: empirical biological significance by providing evolutionary explanations for extant facts of biology and/or empirical chemical significance by predicting unknown but testable chemical reactions. Preferably, they also should have geological significance by being compatible with geological theories on the early history of the earth, which themselves, however, need to be scrutinized for their power to explain and predict facts of geology and chemistry. These requirements follow from Popper’s methodology of science (Popper, 1959; Popper, 1963; Popper, 1972). They constitute the challenge of the field.

Only two theories on the origin of life are detailed...

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Authors
  1. Günter Wächtershäuser
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Microbiology, University of Minnesota, Box 196, Twin Cities, Minneapolis, MN 55455-0312, USA

    Martin Dworkin Professor Dr. (Editor-in-Chief) (Editor-in-Chief)

  2. Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Stanford University Medical School, 299 Campus Drive, Fairchild, D039, Stanford, CA, 94305-5124, USA

    Stanley Falkow

  3. Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology, Tel Aviv University, Ramat-Aviv, 69978, Israel

    Eugene Rosenberg

  4. Department of Microbiology, Technical University Munich, 80290, Munich, Germany

    Karl-Heinz Schleifer

  5. DSMZ- German Collection of Microorganisms and Cell Cultures GmbH, Mascheroder Weg 1b, 38124, Braunschweig, Germany

    Erko Stackebrandt

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© 2006 Springer-Verlag

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Wächtershäuser, G. (2006). Origin of Life: RNA World versus Autocatalytic Anabolism. In: Dworkin, M., Falkow, S., Rosenberg, E., Schleifer, KH., Stackebrandt, E. (eds) The Prokaryotes. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/0-387-30741-9_11

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