Transition from Non-Living to Living Matter: filling the gap with a laboratory-based approach according to a Land-based birthplace and Iron catalysis hypotheses at the origin of life on the early Earth and beyond.

The story of life’s origins is one of the deep, intriguing, and unsolved mysteries of our Science. With several hypotheses in play, the challenge is to replicate the conditions that allowed life to emerge. I developed a new approach to stimulate the energetic processes that may have led to the emergence of proto-metabolic pathway on Earth or earth-like planet. Current status of my laboratory experiments in hydrogel environments, utilizing the self-organizing M4 material obtained from meteorites and terrestrial rocks and minerals as model for the emergence and early evolution of life on Earth, will be presented and discussed. My findings give support to MuGeRo hypothesis that I have already proposed are in line with recent paper showing that mineral containing Iron and Nickel that would have been common on the early Earth and those reported by other authors on a land-based birthplace supporting the theory that life could have emerged on Earth from inanimate matter via mineral/rocks-organic interfacial processes.