摘要
Over the last several hundred years of scientific progress, we have arrived at a deep understanding of the non-living world. We have not yet achieved an analogous, deep understanding of the living world. The origins of life is our best chance at discovering scientific laws governing life, because it marks the point of departure from the predictable physical and chemical world to the novel, history-dependent living world. This theme issue aims to explore ways to build a deeper understanding of the nature of biology, by modelling the origins of life on a sufficiently abstract level, starting from prebiotic conditions on Earth and possibly on other planets and bridging quantitative frameworks approaching universal aspects of life. The aim of the editors is to stimulate new directions for solving the origins of life. The present introduction represents the point of view of the editors on some of the most promising future directions.
摘要译文
在过去几百年的科学进步中，我们对非生命世界有了深刻的认识。我们还没有对生活世界有一个类似的深刻的理解。生命的起源是我们发现有关生命的科学规律的最好机会，因为它标志着从可预测的物理和化学世界到依赖历史的新世界的出发点。本主题旨在探索如何通过对生物起源进行充分抽象的层面来建立对生物学本质的深入理解，从地球上的益生元状况开始，甚至可能在其他行星上开展工作，并将接近生命普遍方面的量化框架。编辑的目标是激发解决生命起源的新方向。目前的介绍代表了编辑们关于一些最有希望的未来方向的观点。
Sara I. Walker[1];N. Packard[2];G. D. Cody[3]. Re-conceptualizing the origins of life[J]. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 2017,375(2109)