Organisch-chemisches Laboratorium der ETH Zürich, Hönggerberg, Wolfgang-Pauli-Str. 10, CHI H309, CH-8093 Zürich, Switzerland.
Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2011 Dec 23;50(52):12412-72. doi: 10.1002/anie.201103672. Epub 2011 Dec 7.
"We'll never be able to know" is a truism that leads to resignation with respect to any experimental effort to search for the chemistry of life's origin. But such resignation runs radically counter to the challenge imposed upon chemistry as a natural science. Notwithstanding the prognosis according to which the shortest path to understanding the metamorphosis of the chemical into the biological is by way of experimental modeling of "artificial chemical life", the scientific search for the route nature adopted in creating the life we know will arguably never truly end. It is, after all, part of the search for our own origin.
“我们永远无法知道”是一个真理，这导致人们对任何试图寻找生命起源化学的实验努力都只能听天由命。但是，这种听天由命与化学作为一门自然科学所面临的挑战背道而驰。尽管有人预测，要理解化学向生物的转变，最短的途径是通过“人工化学生命”的实验模拟，但科学对自然创造我们所知道的生命的路径的探索可以说是永无止境的。毕竟，这也是我们对自身起源的探索的一部分。
