1. In his article “Why Are Cells Powered by Proton Gradients?[1]Lane remarks in regard to Peter Mitchell's Nobel prize for the discovery of the role of proton gradients in bioenergetics: “There's an irony here. Mitchell's Nobel was for work in chemistry yet his ideas are actually about the elimination of chemistry. In the same way that the genetic code enables information to transcend chemistry so Mitchell's proton gradients enable cellular metabolism to transcend chemistry.” Our main point here is that the same assertion applies to essentially all of the molecular transformations of life.
2. As supplied by potential natural sources such as meteorites such “building blocks” are inevitably quantitatively negligible fractions often pushing detection limits of a vast array of chemically related molecules. Reasonable specificity is only achieved in laboratory reactions e.g. Fischer‐Tropsch in which reactants and conditions are carefully restricted and controlled.
3. Opinion: Studies on the origin of life — the end of the beginning
4. Peretó et al.[26]provide an illuminating and scholarly discussion of the thinking of Darwin and his contemporaries on the problem of “abiogenesis.”