We'll probably never know for certain, but we are getting closer to models that can account for abiogenesis. It might not have a tangible impact on daily life, but most people would like to know how the whole life thing got started. Is there any practical use for this research? Maybe terraforming?
A fascinating study that tries to solve the most difficult problem in the origin of life: bootstrapping. Nobody has been able to explain how the multitude of complex organic molecules needed to support life got there in the first place.
It's a little like we're trying to reconstruct modern industrial civilization by assuming Dow Chemical exists whenever necessary. Dow and the entire chemical industry arose from a bootstrapping process in which simple feedstocks become ever more complex inputs to ever more specialized industries. The Industrial Revolution would have been impossible without it.
This study looks at the ability of alpha-hydroxy acids to spontaneously assemble semi-permeable compartments ("microdroplets") that could have played an early role, concentrating reactive species and enabling reactions that couldn't take place otherwise. As such, they'd serve as a kind of scaffolding. Useful for a time, and then discarded with the appearance of better structures.
Four out of 5 of these candidates (which are all hydroxy analogs of amino acids), are chiral. The rate of formation, permeability, and durability of the compartments formed might expected to depend on the enantiomeric purity of the starting hydroxy acids.
Surprisingly, the study apparently says nothing about enantioenrichment of the alpha-hydroxy acids. Then again, the study only begins to scratch the surface of what this new chemical system might be capable of.
AFAICT, this is a brand new, highly hackable chemical system with vast potential not just in the origin of life, but across chemistry and biology.
So far, the study only demonstrates inclusion of dyes. The real test will be to get these things to facilitate reactions that would not occur in the surrounding medium.
I really like the idea of this as a scaffold for collecting lipids for the first cell membranes. It seems likely to me that there would need to be some relatively simple compound responsible. The fact this is present in meteorites gives me some confidence that it must be a compound that forms fairly easily. Once again, the "improbability of life" just got a little more probable.
The problem is that once you start to appreciate the immense complexity in a single, most basic cell, you realize how far away we are from understanding how life got started.
This article would be comparable to some future generation trying to figure out how our computers were made and then stumbling upon factory that could make the cases. The case is important, but relatively trivial part of the machinery. Similarly, the cell membrane is critical (not just important), but very simple compared the molecular machines (and more) involved in all cells.
Personally, I think if someone researches the physics/chemistry/biology deeply enough, he'll get to the conclusion that abiogenesis not possible naturally with the physical laws we have now. I believe this is an opening for a proof that this world is really a simulation.
> The problem is that once you start to appreciate the immense complexity in a single, most basic cell, you realize how far away we are from understanding how life got started.
And we have massive issues with simulating single molecule interactions or protein folding. We are nowhere near simulating a single cell without all its external interactions. Not even remotely close.
The field of molecular simulation is holistically based on shortcuts and abstractions to make something out of that research funding. Supercomputers are crunching away at massively simplified models.
And even if we had single cells working a whole new world of complexity opens up next. Interactions with other cells and even worse, the environment where everything from pH over temperature to pressure and light has to be considered.
Not really, no: semi-permeable membranes have the ability to spontaneously generate strong energy / concentration gradients and remove external interference from chemical signals. That's a necessity for life as we know it -- nearly all cellular chemical reactions are driven by concentration gradients across membranes.
The "RNA World" hypothesis [0] and the flexibility of RNA as both a self-replicating and catalytic molecule gives us a pretty convincing conceptual pathway to the development of the central dogma of molecular biology we understand today (DNA -> RNA -> Protein) -- especially considering DNA translation mechanisms are nearly entirely powered by ribozymes. Understanding how semipermeable membranes may spontaneously form to "protect" other molecular species like RNA is a pretty foundational step in trying to understand the recipe for the formation of early life.
The simulation hypothesis is fun and all, but I don't think it's a reasonable stand-in for abiogenesis. You're basically invoking God or a Godlike entity at that point, when we have pretty reasonable pathways to conceptualizing the development of early life.
These phrases come up very often when discussing Origin of Life, but it's basically handwaving. It's like saying "we built a plane, which gives us a convincing conceptual pathway on how to get to the moon." The differences in complexities are sooo vast, there is really no comparison.
I can state it more clearly - We couldn't create a functioning cell from scratch (atoms) if we wanted to. I'm not talking about injecting/replacing DNA in an existing cell as Craig Venter et al do (which is impressive. You'll see many articles talk about "we built the first cell" or even add the words "from scratch" but this is what they did.)
I mean build all the functioning pieces - all the molecular machines (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_machine) and other components. I don't even think we yet understand all the pieces.
We've never created a dinosaur in the lab like they did in Jurassic Park, does that mean no dinosaurs were ever spontaneously born?
You're right, biology is a complex field that, mechanistically, we don't understand all of the intricacies of from first (physical) principles. But invoking the simulation hypothesis as a reasonable substitute for what you, personally, believe is the unlikelihood of abiogenesis is functionally equivalent to suggesting Satan planted dinosaur bones underground to misguide our faith. I don't understand how you think, "could this be evidence of a simulation" is any less hand-wavy than, "RNA has catalytic properties that suggest lifeforms may have begun as RNA-based. In fact, there are viruses that self-replicate by hijacking cellular machinery that are entirely RNA. It's not unreasonable to believe that, given long enough timeframes, similar constructs may have spontaneously self-replicated, even if inefficiently."
The difference between biology and computation is that the mechanics of large-scale molecular systems are, in most cases, too chaotic with too large of a surface area of potential interactions to explain every step as a direct, in vitro replicable chemical reaction - we must approximate where possible. We have to rely on the properties of large stochastic systems, nearly unfathomable timeframes, and extremely rare events to explain most of the world we see around us today.
Yes, every element of the biological world is entirely unlikely. That's kind of the whole reason the field is so beautiful. It only works because there's just so dang much organic material, a constant and consistent heat lamp, and it's all been shaking around violently in a water bath for 3.8 billion years.
> "it's not unreasonable to believe that, given long enough timeframes, similar constructs may have spontaneously self-replicated, even if inefficiently.".
It is unreasonable.
I'm afraid your long enough timeframes (3.8 billion years) are not even remotely close to long enough if you consider any serious actual statistical measure of how long it would need for something as complex as just a single cell to "spontaneously" exist, the numbers just don't workout.
Any hypothesis that just guesses how life started with no substantial evidence whatsoever, is just a desperate try to blind yourself form the elephant in the room, that this insane complexity can't just make itself.
No matter how long time passes, a watch can't just come to existence without a watchmaker.
> We've never created a dinosaur in the lab like they did in Jurassic Park, does that mean no dinosaurs were ever spontaneously born?
We're talking about one amoebae - try to make just one.
Sorry I mentioned the Simulation hypothesis - it's a red herring. It's not important.
>We have to rely on the properties of large stochastic systems, nearly unfathomable timeframes, and extremely rare events to explain most of the world we see around us today.
This is if you want things to happen by chance in a myriad of different environments (acidic, basic, oxidizing...) then we think that a few billion years is enough. But in a lab settings, you can get things just right and coerce the reactions you want. Even then, controlling everything, we have know idea how we could do it. If you know a molecular or evolutionary biologist who disagrees, I'd love to talk with them.
And these time frames are very fathomable - big, but things we can put our head around. We can talk about the physics and dynamics of the universe, the great expansion, etc. It's not something that's beyond us. Making diamonds naturally is a long, multi-million/billion year process. But now we can make them in the lab. With cells, we're talking about a similar time frame but something vastly more complicated.
As I said, when I look at the science/math I don't see any current models of abiogenesis (RNA world, protocells, etc.) as remotely viable. IMO, the only reason for a to hold on to this approach is because the alternatives are untenable. I'm open to hearing other approaches - proving or denying abiogenesis does not threaten my worldview.
I said to make a amoeba - my mistake - that's a eukaryote which is more complicated. Start with a bacteria.
BTW - Sir Fred Hoyle (an atheist) used his "tornado in a junkyard" idea (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junkyard_tornado) to describe what he thought was the likelihood of a working cell forming naturally.
The idea is universally reject by evolutionary biologist, as Wikipedia states, "no biologist imagines that complex structures arise in a single step." The problem that gets swept under the rug is that until you have a single functioning cell, there is no reproduction and therefore nothing that will perpetuate the chemical advances made to get there.
I'm not sure how the simulation theory even solves anything. It just pushes the problem to the simulator. I guess the assumption is maybe the simulator is much less complex, so makes the problem disappeared through our ignorance about the simulator, which is just the 'god of the gaps' fallacy in techno speak.
The simulator is not less complex, the difference is that the simulator is not subjected to the same limitations/rules/laws of our universe.
You either choose the universe itself to be infinite (always have and always will exist) which contradicts all our observations about it, or you assume a higher entity (outside the universe) that is infinite (always have and always will exist).
The third option (nothing infinite) means we wouldn't exist at all, because if there's no "start" then you go into an infinite loop trying to find a start and nothing happens. But since we are actually here, then third option is out, and only the second option (higher entity) makes logical sense.
That's not true. God doesn't imply he wants you to behave a certain way. Most religions work that way but a God which simply created the universe and doesn't care what humanity is doing is a possibility.
I don't. The available evidence, if you look at it with a preconceived bias towards some theological origin, seems to indicate either a single, quixotic or even malevolent god, or a pantheon that includes tricksters, weirdos and haters.
A matrix/simulation origin allows goofy things like ring species, parasites and molluscs with lots of different eye paradigms - they're either glitches or leftovers from the last run, or exercizes in imagination for the matrix runners.
I think a fallacy, and this is not aimed at your comment, of intelligent design people is that because humans can't really comprehend the complexity of cells, biodiversity, and life chemistry, that it couldn't have arisen from somewhat basic preconditions and "bioalgorithms".
It's really a condescending bias in disguise. Because I, who consider myself awesome and smart, cannot decipher how this could have come into being, then it clearly must be the work of a deity.
To me, once you have mass scale evolution, such that you have ?quadrillions? of individual organisms doing their own survival calculations and experimentation over billions of years, then the amazing powers of the forms of life don't seem impossible.
It remains to be seen with all the habitable-zone worlds being discovered what is out there.
The problem is not with failing to comprehend the complexity of cells though, it's that stuff can't just come to existence given enough time.
First of all, the time is not enough, given the complexity of a single cell, the number of conditions/variables needed for something like that to just blindly happen is absurd, a couple billion years is nothing.
Secondly, even if we assume enough time just for the sake of argument, time is not the only factor, you can't just throw "given enough time" and fix everything, things don't just make itself given enough time, a plane would not just come to existence given a billion years.
It's very easy to just oversimplify and throw "billions of years" "mass scale evolution", but once you check the details, it's just not that simple.
>I think a fallacy, and this is not aimed at your comment, of intelligent design people is that because humans can't really comprehend the complexity of cells, biodiversity, and life chemistry, that it couldn't have arisen from somewhat basic preconditions and "bioalgorithms".
You're definitely correct that we often apply our mindset onto the world and interpret events according to the model we've made for ourselves. It's hard to be brutally objective and accept the facts, even if it means throwing everything I know out the window. (note, I'm saying this about the meta discussion, not this specific one.)
I believe this is an opening for a proof that this world is really a simulation.
Or that we are missing some physical laws. I wonder if it's not kind of all the same ultimately. What difference do you make between a simulation and a physics system knowing that there is logical reasons why my screen lights up the way it does when I'm playing a video game for example. There is a logical explanation on how my avatar has spawned, it's because some code is executed.
What is a simulation exactly? Something where things appears out of.. what? out of nothing logical? Why not I guess.
Since reading it somewhere in the distant past, I have become convinced that the moon played a vital part in the origin of life, by creating the tides.
Picture a coastline in early Earth. Tide washes up a bunch of chemicals that get baked in a warm sun, while simultaneously getting exposed to a harsh atmosphere with plenty of energy surges (volcanic/atmospheric).
Tide washes in a bunch of fresh chemicals to reiterate the process.
Rinse & repeat a few hundred billion times.
Given the rarity (AFAIR) of moons as large as ours orbiting planets as small as ours, that might also explain the apparent rarity of life in the cosmos.
I like the theory that states the Universe is just big enough for one occurrence of intelligent life to evolve. So, in a way, you can never prove the existence of God, because the math checks out.
Well, it would seem to have occurred only once in all the universe we've looked at. That's as rare as it can be, given the anthropic nature of the observation. :)
Statistically speaking... as in mean civilisations per galaxy, yep I agree, no idea where that might land!
Outside solar system, we can hardly observe anything but supercivilizations as we conjecture they should be. In our solar system, non-sentient life is still not fully excluded on Mars, and there is a reasonable chance of finding something on Europa, Titan or other big moons.
In the galaxy overall from what we know now about occurrence of planets in habitable zones, there likely should be tens of million earthlikes with a substantial sized moon.
One thing arguing against this is that there was little free atmospheric oxygen, and thus little ozone. According to Nick Lane in his book, "Oxygen", UV light at the surface of the earth was 30 times greater then than now.
Life has had a lot of time to build up mechanisms to protect against UV light [1], including sophisticated dna repair mechanisms and creating sophisticated antioxidants and regulation mechanisms.
But at the dawn of life, whatever self-catalyzing reaction which constituted the first replicators would have been extremely fragile and unlikely to tolerate baking as you suggest.
[1] In David Goodsell's book "The Machinery of Life", p.112, he mentions that when you stand in the midday sun without sunblock, UV light can cause adjacent cytosine and thymine rungs on the dna to cross link to each other. A repair mechanism sweeps the dna looking for this exact bond to unlink it before it gums up normal dna transcription activity. How often does it happen? 50 to 100 times per second ... per exposed cell.
The full title of the first book is "Oxygen, The molecule that made the world", and was published in 2002. I'm not sure how much things have changed in the past 17 years, but presumably it is mostly still up to date.
The first half of the book is about the history of oxygen on the planet and interesting details on how we can know it. The second half of the book is about oxygen processes on life mostly at the cellular level but also some at the whole-organism level.
The book is pretty dense but it is fill with enough interesting ideas, such as why it is believed that cells had developed the ability to produce antioxidants before there was much free atmospheric oxygen. There is a discussion of how can it be that at every cellular division there is a certain fraction of transcription errors, yet the germ line still can pass on for billions of generations and still produce a healthy population.
Thanks for the reference, will try to look it up.
I guess here I'm referring to the passage in the linked article that says:
"...simple [chemicals] spontaneously polymerize and self-assemble into [bigger chemicals] when dried at moderate temperatures followed by rehydration."
Stuart Kauffman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Kauffman) has long maintained that the complexity of biological systems and organisms results from self-organization, far-from-equilibrium dynamics, and the inherent fundamental properties of chemistry, particularly carbon chemistry. In his view, the origins of cellular life are baked into the fabric of the universe.
As an aside, when reading this I considered a fun alternative theory (I'm not actually proposing it as any kind of truth) that if it's ultimately discovered that the processes behind the creation of life are just too complex to be duplicated in our universe...
...Rather than invoking a god which comes with its own problems (i.e. who/what created the creator) one could infer that life came from a universe where the physics/conditions for creating life are possible, and life somehow crossed branes moving from one universe to the next.
Consider a reverse/inverted universe where instead of space being a void, space is solid containing voids/cavities/pathways between voids, allowing complex chemical processes to occur naturally and at great scale.
38 comments
[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 79.7 ms ] threadIt's a little like we're trying to reconstruct modern industrial civilization by assuming Dow Chemical exists whenever necessary. Dow and the entire chemical industry arose from a bootstrapping process in which simple feedstocks become ever more complex inputs to ever more specialized industries. The Industrial Revolution would have been impossible without it.
This study looks at the ability of alpha-hydroxy acids to spontaneously assemble semi-permeable compartments ("microdroplets") that could have played an early role, concentrating reactive species and enabling reactions that couldn't take place otherwise. As such, they'd serve as a kind of scaffolding. Useful for a time, and then discarded with the appearance of better structures.
Four out of 5 of these candidates (which are all hydroxy analogs of amino acids), are chiral. The rate of formation, permeability, and durability of the compartments formed might expected to depend on the enantiomeric purity of the starting hydroxy acids.
Surprisingly, the study apparently says nothing about enantioenrichment of the alpha-hydroxy acids. Then again, the study only begins to scratch the surface of what this new chemical system might be capable of.
AFAICT, this is a brand new, highly hackable chemical system with vast potential not just in the origin of life, but across chemistry and biology.
So far, the study only demonstrates inclusion of dyes. The real test will be to get these things to facilitate reactions that would not occur in the surrounding medium.
This article would be comparable to some future generation trying to figure out how our computers were made and then stumbling upon factory that could make the cases. The case is important, but relatively trivial part of the machinery. Similarly, the cell membrane is critical (not just important), but very simple compared the molecular machines (and more) involved in all cells.
Personally, I think if someone researches the physics/chemistry/biology deeply enough, he'll get to the conclusion that abiogenesis not possible naturally with the physical laws we have now. I believe this is an opening for a proof that this world is really a simulation.
Anyone else feel like that?
And we have massive issues with simulating single molecule interactions or protein folding. We are nowhere near simulating a single cell without all its external interactions. Not even remotely close.
The field of molecular simulation is holistically based on shortcuts and abstractions to make something out of that research funding. Supercomputers are crunching away at massively simplified models.
And even if we had single cells working a whole new world of complexity opens up next. Interactions with other cells and even worse, the environment where everything from pH over temperature to pressure and light has to be considered.
The "RNA World" hypothesis [0] and the flexibility of RNA as both a self-replicating and catalytic molecule gives us a pretty convincing conceptual pathway to the development of the central dogma of molecular biology we understand today (DNA -> RNA -> Protein) -- especially considering DNA translation mechanisms are nearly entirely powered by ribozymes. Understanding how semipermeable membranes may spontaneously form to "protect" other molecular species like RNA is a pretty foundational step in trying to understand the recipe for the formation of early life.
The simulation hypothesis is fun and all, but I don't think it's a reasonable stand-in for abiogenesis. You're basically invoking God or a Godlike entity at that point, when we have pretty reasonable pathways to conceptualizing the development of early life.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_world
These phrases come up very often when discussing Origin of Life, but it's basically handwaving. It's like saying "we built a plane, which gives us a convincing conceptual pathway on how to get to the moon." The differences in complexities are sooo vast, there is really no comparison.
I can state it more clearly - We couldn't create a functioning cell from scratch (atoms) if we wanted to. I'm not talking about injecting/replacing DNA in an existing cell as Craig Venter et al do (which is impressive. You'll see many articles talk about "we built the first cell" or even add the words "from scratch" but this is what they did.)
I mean build all the functioning pieces - all the molecular machines (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_machine) and other components. I don't even think we yet understand all the pieces.
You can read some of my questions about abiogenesis at https://biology.stackexchange.com/users/13238/yehosef - some of the questions and answers may highlight the complexity.
You're right, biology is a complex field that, mechanistically, we don't understand all of the intricacies of from first (physical) principles. But invoking the simulation hypothesis as a reasonable substitute for what you, personally, believe is the unlikelihood of abiogenesis is functionally equivalent to suggesting Satan planted dinosaur bones underground to misguide our faith. I don't understand how you think, "could this be evidence of a simulation" is any less hand-wavy than, "RNA has catalytic properties that suggest lifeforms may have begun as RNA-based. In fact, there are viruses that self-replicate by hijacking cellular machinery that are entirely RNA. It's not unreasonable to believe that, given long enough timeframes, similar constructs may have spontaneously self-replicated, even if inefficiently."
The difference between biology and computation is that the mechanics of large-scale molecular systems are, in most cases, too chaotic with too large of a surface area of potential interactions to explain every step as a direct, in vitro replicable chemical reaction - we must approximate where possible. We have to rely on the properties of large stochastic systems, nearly unfathomable timeframes, and extremely rare events to explain most of the world we see around us today.
Yes, every element of the biological world is entirely unlikely. That's kind of the whole reason the field is so beautiful. It only works because there's just so dang much organic material, a constant and consistent heat lamp, and it's all been shaking around violently in a water bath for 3.8 billion years.
It is unreasonable. I'm afraid your long enough timeframes (3.8 billion years) are not even remotely close to long enough if you consider any serious actual statistical measure of how long it would need for something as complex as just a single cell to "spontaneously" exist, the numbers just don't workout.
Any hypothesis that just guesses how life started with no substantial evidence whatsoever, is just a desperate try to blind yourself form the elephant in the room, that this insane complexity can't just make itself.
No matter how long time passes, a watch can't just come to existence without a watchmaker.
We're talking about one amoebae - try to make just one.
Sorry I mentioned the Simulation hypothesis - it's a red herring. It's not important.
>We have to rely on the properties of large stochastic systems, nearly unfathomable timeframes, and extremely rare events to explain most of the world we see around us today.
This is if you want things to happen by chance in a myriad of different environments (acidic, basic, oxidizing...) then we think that a few billion years is enough. But in a lab settings, you can get things just right and coerce the reactions you want. Even then, controlling everything, we have know idea how we could do it. If you know a molecular or evolutionary biologist who disagrees, I'd love to talk with them.
And these time frames are very fathomable - big, but things we can put our head around. We can talk about the physics and dynamics of the universe, the great expansion, etc. It's not something that's beyond us. Making diamonds naturally is a long, multi-million/billion year process. But now we can make them in the lab. With cells, we're talking about a similar time frame but something vastly more complicated.
As I said, when I look at the science/math I don't see any current models of abiogenesis (RNA world, protocells, etc.) as remotely viable. IMO, the only reason for a to hold on to this approach is because the alternatives are untenable. I'm open to hearing other approaches - proving or denying abiogenesis does not threaten my worldview.
BTW - Sir Fred Hoyle (an atheist) used his "tornado in a junkyard" idea (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junkyard_tornado) to describe what he thought was the likelihood of a working cell forming naturally.
The idea is universally reject by evolutionary biologist, as Wikipedia states, "no biologist imagines that complex structures arise in a single step." The problem that gets swept under the rug is that until you have a single functioning cell, there is no reproduction and therefore nothing that will perpetuate the chemical advances made to get there.
You either choose the universe itself to be infinite (always have and always will exist) which contradicts all our observations about it, or you assume a higher entity (outside the universe) that is infinite (always have and always will exist).
The third option (nothing infinite) means we wouldn't exist at all, because if there's no "start" then you go into an infinite loop trying to find a start and nothing happens. But since we are actually here, then third option is out, and only the second option (higher entity) makes logical sense.
People don't like to be told what to do, so they'd rather the simulation.
On a "what created the universe" level, they are both identical.
A matrix/simulation origin allows goofy things like ring species, parasites and molluscs with lots of different eye paradigms - they're either glitches or leftovers from the last run, or exercizes in imagination for the matrix runners.
It's really a condescending bias in disguise. Because I, who consider myself awesome and smart, cannot decipher how this could have come into being, then it clearly must be the work of a deity.
To me, once you have mass scale evolution, such that you have ?quadrillions? of individual organisms doing their own survival calculations and experimentation over billions of years, then the amazing powers of the forms of life don't seem impossible.
It remains to be seen with all the habitable-zone worlds being discovered what is out there.
First of all, the time is not enough, given the complexity of a single cell, the number of conditions/variables needed for something like that to just blindly happen is absurd, a couple billion years is nothing.
Secondly, even if we assume enough time just for the sake of argument, time is not the only factor, you can't just throw "given enough time" and fix everything, things don't just make itself given enough time, a plane would not just come to existence given a billion years.
It's very easy to just oversimplify and throw "billions of years" "mass scale evolution", but once you check the details, it's just not that simple.
You're definitely correct that we often apply our mindset onto the world and interpret events according to the model we've made for ourselves. It's hard to be brutally objective and accept the facts, even if it means throwing everything I know out the window. (note, I'm saying this about the meta discussion, not this specific one.)
Or that we are missing some physical laws. I wonder if it's not kind of all the same ultimately. What difference do you make between a simulation and a physics system knowing that there is logical reasons why my screen lights up the way it does when I'm playing a video game for example. There is a logical explanation on how my avatar has spawned, it's because some code is executed.
What is a simulation exactly? Something where things appears out of.. what? out of nothing logical? Why not I guess.
Given the rarity (AFAIR) of moons as large as ours orbiting planets as small as ours, that might also explain the apparent rarity of life in the cosmos.
Statistically speaking... as in mean civilisations per galaxy, yep I agree, no idea where that might land!
In the galaxy overall from what we know now about occurrence of planets in habitable zones, there likely should be tens of million earthlikes with a substantial sized moon.
Life has had a lot of time to build up mechanisms to protect against UV light [1], including sophisticated dna repair mechanisms and creating sophisticated antioxidants and regulation mechanisms.
But at the dawn of life, whatever self-catalyzing reaction which constituted the first replicators would have been extremely fragile and unlikely to tolerate baking as you suggest.
[1] In David Goodsell's book "The Machinery of Life", p.112, he mentions that when you stand in the midday sun without sunblock, UV light can cause adjacent cytosine and thymine rungs on the dna to cross link to each other. A repair mechanism sweeps the dna looking for this exact bond to unlink it before it gums up normal dna transcription activity. How often does it happen? 50 to 100 times per second ... per exposed cell.
The first half of the book is about the history of oxygen on the planet and interesting details on how we can know it. The second half of the book is about oxygen processes on life mostly at the cellular level but also some at the whole-organism level.
The book is pretty dense but it is fill with enough interesting ideas, such as why it is believed that cells had developed the ability to produce antioxidants before there was much free atmospheric oxygen. There is a discussion of how can it be that at every cellular division there is a certain fraction of transcription errors, yet the germ line still can pass on for billions of generations and still produce a healthy population.
"...simple [chemicals] spontaneously polymerize and self-assemble into [bigger chemicals] when dried at moderate temperatures followed by rehydration."
...Rather than invoking a god which comes with its own problems (i.e. who/what created the creator) one could infer that life came from a universe where the physics/conditions for creating life are possible, and life somehow crossed branes moving from one universe to the next.
Consider a reverse/inverted universe where instead of space being a void, space is solid containing voids/cavities/pathways between voids, allowing complex chemical processes to occur naturally and at great scale.