Alex McColgan

One that doesn't require enzymes.

One driven in part by the same physical pressures as fatty acids forming a cell-like structure.

A mechanism that could have introduced information to protocells.

You see, different RNA bases can encode specific amino acids.

This means that a random string of RNA in early protocells could have produced a non-random string of amino acids, which could have conferred an advantage to the protocell containing it.

Perhaps the amino acids stabilized the membrane.

and it would have been more likely to survive and divide, potentially reproducing that information and passing it on.

So now we have a great primordial soup of molecular potential.

We have the thermodynamic encouragement for life, self-dividing cell walls and short RNA strands that could have encoded functional amino acids.

How can we get past this primordial soup of small molecules for life to emerge?

Well, we also need the one mechanism that is crucial to all theories.

Selection.

Without selection pressures, in 14 billion years, molecular complexity wouldn't have moved much past basic molecules like these, let alone a complex enzyme, because you'd be relying on random processes with very low probabilities.

Very much like shaking a bag of Lego bricks together for a few years and expecting a perfectly formed Death Star to pop out.

As the size of a molecule grows, the space of possible configurations grows absurdly quickly, and the probability that even one specific molecule can be made in a useful quantity by chance falls to near zero.

and that's just for one molecule, let alone a gold pocket watch, the creationists may have a point.

Incredibly though, research suggests that the proposed chemical reactions on early Earth were capable of a kind of evolution way before they transitioned to life.

Some chemical reaction pathways can produce molecules that catalyze the pathway itself,

These are known as autocatalytic.

This catalysis increases the flow of resources through one pathway, potentially away from a competing pathway, and therefore increases the first success.