Schoenmakers Ludo L J, Reydon Thomas A C, Kirschning Andreas
Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research (KLI), 3400 Klosterneuburg, Austria.
Institute of Philosophy, Centre for Ethics and Law in the Life Sciences (CELLS), Leibniz University Hannover, 30159 Hannover, Germany.
Life (Basel). 2024 Jan 24;14(2):175. doi: 10.3390/life14020175.
The role of evolutionary theory at the origin of life is an extensively debated topic. The origin and early development of life is usually separated into a prebiotic phase and a protocellular phase, ultimately leading to the Last Universal Common Ancestor. Most likely, the Last Universal Common Ancestor was subject to Darwinian evolution, but the question remains to what extent Darwinian evolution applies to the prebiotic and protocellular phases. In this review, we reflect on the current status of evolutionary theory in origins of life research by bringing together philosophy of science, evolutionary biology, and empirical research in the origins field. We explore the various ways in which evolutionary theory has been extended beyond biology; we look at how these extensions apply to the prebiotic development of (proto)metabolism; and we investigate how the terminology from evolutionary theory is currently being employed in state-of-the-art origins of life research. In doing so, we identify some of the current obstacles to an evolutionary account of the origins of life, as well as open up new avenues of research.
进化理论在生命起源中的作用是一个广泛争论的话题。生命的起源和早期发展通常分为前生物阶段和原细胞阶段，最终导致了最后一个共同祖先。很可能，最后一个共同祖先经历了达尔文式进化，但问题仍然是达尔文式进化在多大程度上适用于前生物阶段和原细胞阶段。在这篇综述中，我们通过结合科学哲学、进化生物学和生命起源领域的实证研究，来思考进化理论在生命起源研究中的现状。我们探索了进化理论被扩展到生物学之外的各种方式；我们研究了这些扩展如何应用于（原）代谢的前生物发展；并且我们调查了进化理论的术语目前在最前沿的生命起源研究中是如何被使用的。通过这样做，我们识别了当前对生命起源的进化解释的一些障碍，并开辟了新的研究途径。
