Search for Articles:
Title / Keyword
Author / Affiliation / Email
Journal
Article Type
 
 
Advanced Search
 
Section
Special Issue
Volume
Issue
Number
Page
 
6.0
3.4
Journals
Life
Special Issues
Origin of Life in Chemically Complex Messy Environments: 3rd Edition
share announcement

Origin of Life in Chemically Complex Messy Environments: 3rd Edition

A special issue of Life (ISSN 2075-1729). This special issue belongs to the section "Origin of Life".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2025) | Viewed by 2098

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Ranajay Saha

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
Interests: origin of life; RNA world; minimal synthetic cells; molecular biology; protein and RNA biophysics; macromolecular crowding and confinement; UV damage; fluorescence spectroscopy
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Alberto Vázquez-Salazar

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
Interests: origin of life; RNA world; early evolution of life
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The first and second volume of the Special Issue “Origin of Life in Chemically Complex Messy Environments” (https://www.mdpi.com/journal/life/special_issues/Origin_of_Life https://www.mdpi.com/journal/life/special_issues/XLP4UL8706) were successes, and it is our pleasure to announce the third volume.

Traditionally, the vast majority of prebiotic chemistry research has consisted of experiments focused on the behavior of a restricted spectrum of organic molecules, usually studying the components of life separately, where the results are limited by the simulated scenario, also described as "clean and isolated" experiments. However, research on the origin of life needs to be expanded in order to enable continuous progress in the field. Considering the prebiotic Earth four billion years ago (a messy atmosphere, in other words), a chaotic mélange of diverse starting materials appears to be realistic. As prebiotic chemists and origin-of-life researchers, we must modify our current approach and consider more chemical and geological scenarios in which both physical processes and driving forces toward primitive life formation are examined. In this Special Issue, we welcome the submission of original research papers, comprehensive reviews, and perspectives that demonstrate or summarize advances related to the origin of life in various complex chemical and prebiotically feasible environments.

Dr. Ranajay Saha
Dr. Alberto Vázquez-Salazar
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Life is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • origin of life
  • complex chemical systems 
  • prebiotic chemistry 
  • prebiotic metabolisms 
  • chemical evolution 
  • prebiotic catalysts

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

  • Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
  • Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
  • Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
  • External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
  • Reprint: MDPI Books provides the opportunity to republish successful Special Issues in book format, both online and in print.

Further information on MDPI's Special Issue policies can be found here.

Related Special Issue

Published Papers (1 paper)

Order results
Result details
Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Review

34 pages, 2544 KB  
Review
Complex and Messy Prebiotic Chemistry: Obstacles and Opportunities for an RNA World
by Alberto Vázquez-Salazar
Life 2026, 16(2), 240; https://doi.org/10.3390/life16020240 - 2 Feb 2026
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1661
Abstract
Traditional prebiotic chemistry experiments often isolated single reactions under clean, controlled conditions, yet early Earth was chemically diverse and physically dynamic. Such primordial complexity likely imposed obstacles, including side reactions, low yields, and unstable intermediates, but it also generated opportunities, including redundant routes, [...] Read more.
Traditional prebiotic chemistry experiments often isolated single reactions under clean, controlled conditions, yet early Earth was chemically diverse and physically dynamic. Such primordial complexity likely imposed obstacles, including side reactions, low yields, and unstable intermediates, but it also generated opportunities, including redundant routes, parallel pathways, and environmental filters that could bias mixtures toward subsets of persistent and chemically productive compounds. This review examines how heterogeneous prebiotic settings could generate RNA precursors, including nucleobases, ribose, and phosphate-containing species, through multiple concurrent pathways. Although side reactions can sequester carbon in inert tars and reduce yields of specific targets, networked chemistry can also enhance robustness when different routes converge on shared intermediates, or when apparent byproducts reenter productive cycles. Environmental factors such as ultraviolet irradiation, mineral surfaces, wet-dry cycling, and thermal gradients can act as constraints that enrich certain products by differential stability, reactivity, and compartmentalization. In this context, the RNA world hypothesis remains compelling, as RNA can store heritable sequence information and catalyze reactions through sequence dependent folding, thereby linking heredity and chemistry within a single polymer. At the same time, the emergence of functional sequence information and of control architectures that couple sequence to reproducible function remains a central open problem, and it sets clear limits on what chemistry alone can explain. Rather than dismissing messy mixtures as irrelevant noise, it is more accurate to treat them as the native context in which concentration mechanisms, environmental cycling, and selective persistence could enable the accumulation and survival of RNA related molecules. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Origin of Life in Chemically Complex Messy Environments: 3rd Edition)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:
 
Displaying articles 1-1
Back to TopTop