How many astrobiologists are among you?
I'm not asking for "papers", now, I'm only asking how many of you are
interested in biology with an astronomy "twist"?

(I wonder why the sf writers settled upon "astrobiology" instead of
bioastronomy?)

Darwin's works explained how life evolved, but those ideas fairly well begin
with the first single cell and go on from there.
Neo-Darwinists have in some cases gone back a bit farther to try to explain
how the cell itself evolved.
How did the nucleus, with its nucleic acid in highly organised form, evolve?
How did other cell constituents evolve, such as vacuoles, and especially
mitochondria.
A human cell can contain hundreds of these tiny mitochondria, each with a
very different organisation of nucleic acid, very different from the nucleic
acid in the cell's nucleus, and each mitochondrium passes to offspring from
the mother.

Your biologists have noted how closely the advancement of the embryo and
fetus matches the accepted track of evolution.
However, most of these studies, similar to Darwin's, begin with a single
cell, one from the male and one from the female.
From this point, the point of "fertilisation", your science has made some
most profound discovery.

In order, though, to find out more about how the very first cell came about,
perhaps it would be helpful if more studies were performed in the areas of
the male and female organs that actually manufacture the reproductive cells?
Find out the details about how these organs do their jobs, and you might
learn a bit more about the evolution of the cell, especially if focus is
maintained on the initial construction of the CELL MEMBRANE.

What does this have to do with astronomy?
Everything ultimately has something to do with astronomy.
And THAT'S why sf writers settled upon "astrobiology", because astronomy
was, is and always will be "The First Science".

--
**** Darla
Be well and come... be welcome
You are the fifth star!