General Themes

• The research on exoplanets from the origin of life’s perspective
• The search for life in the solar system
• Meteorites, comets, and the fate of their organic matter
• Conditions for life’s origin on the early Earth
• The environmental context and traces of early life on Earth
• The formation and evolution of organics on the early Earth
• The role of minerals in the fate of organic matter and chemical evolution
• The chemical evolution toward the transition to life
• Self-organization and prebiotic molecular systems
• The interplay of the different subsystems for the origin of life: fatty acids or other compartment-forming systems/amino acids/nucleotides
• Early metabolisms and development of compartmentation
• Genetic information and function in the early stages of life
• Evolution:  The driving force for evolution at the chemical and biological stages
• Evolution before and after LUCA/evolution of metabolism
• Evolution:  Competition, cooperativity, complexity, and ecology