Genesis - In The Beginning

PRELIMINARY SECTION: Pathways to “Genesis - In the Beginning: Precursors of Life, Chemical Models and Early Biological Evolution”.- Introduction to Genesis - In  The Beginning.-Foreword.-Origins of Life - Keeping Options Open.- PART 1. CHEMICAL EVOLUTION: The Prebiotic Chemistry of Alternative Nucleic Acids.- Cooptive Evolution of Prebiotic Chemical Networks.- Origin and Evolution of Self-Replicating Polymers on Mineral Habitats.- Mathematical Models of Prebiotic Replication: A Primer for Experimentalists.- Life without Carbon; Rob Hengeveld.- [GADV]-Protein World Hypothesis on the Origin of Life.- Reality of the Emergence of Life-Like Systems from Simple Prebiotic Polymers on Primitive Earth.- The Photobiological Regime in the Very Early Earth and the Emergence of Life.- Prebiotic Formation of Peptides: A Markov Chain Approach.- Atomic Structural Templates of the Earliest Life on Earth: Vibration and Lightning Experiments with Quartz and Amino Acids.- Chemical Evolution in Open Space: A Link to the Origin of Life.- The Prebiotic Chemistry of Nitrogen and the Origin of Life.- PART 2. THE ROLE OF PHYSICS AND GEOPHYSICS IN THE ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION OF LIFE: Moving ‘Far from Equilibrium’ in a Prebiotic Environment: The Role of Maxwell’s Demon in Life Origin.- Life from Interface.- Breaking the Paradigm: The Pattern of Life.- Cyberbiogenesis and the EvoGrid: a 21st Century Grand Challenge.- Constructive Approaches for the Origin of Life.- Origin of Life by Thermodynamic Inversion: A Universal Process.- Life Explained by Heat Engines.- Computational Simulations of Prebiotic Processes.- The Cometary Hydrosphere.- In Situ, High Spatial Resolution Techniques in the Search for the Origin of Life.- PART 3. THE ROLE OF SYMMETRY, INFORMATION AND ORDER IN THE ORIGIN OF LIFE: Disorder to Order, Non-Life to Life. In the Beginning There Was a Mistake.- The Role of Information and Order in the Origin of Life.- The Origin of First Peptides on Earth – From AminoAcids to Homochiral Biomolecules.- Chemical Models for the Origin of Biological Homochirality.- Absolute Asymmetric Reactions and the Origin of Biological Chirality.- Energy-Driven Evolution of Prebiotic Chiral Order (Lessons from Dynamic Systems Modelling).- PART 4. PANSPERMIA: Recurrent Dreams of Life in Meteorites.- Are We from Outer Space? A Critical Review of the Panspermia Hypothesis.- Origin of Life and Panspermia.- PART 5. THE FIRST STEPS OF CELLULAR EVOLUTION: The Dimeric Proto-Ribosome Within the Modern Ribosome.- Oceanic Arginine Translator: The Origin of Life and Early Evolution of the Genetic Code.- Tidal Cycling and the Origin of the Genetic Code: Implications for Cellular Life.- Heterotrophic Model  Protocells.- A Symbiogenic Way in the Origin of Life.- Horizontal Gene Transfer and the Tree of Life.- On the Vesicular Origin of the Cell Cycle.- Hypothesized Micro-Environments for the Origin of Microbial Life on Earth.- PART 6. THE DISTRIBUTION OF LIFE IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM AND ELSEWHERE IN THE COSMOS: What can Life on Earth Tell Us about Life in the Universe?.- Potential for Life in the Saturn System.- Energy Sources for, and Detectability of, Life on Extrasolar Planets.- Environments Habitable by Extremophiles on Earth, the Solar System and Elsewhere.- PART 7. HISTORY AND FRONTIERS OF ASTROBIOLOGY AND THE HUMANITIES: Cultural Implications of the Search and Eventual Discovery of a Second Genesis.- The Concept of Chemical Evolution before Oparin.- A History of Origin of Life Ideas from Darwin to NASA.