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What is life and how could it originate? This question lies at the heart of understanding the cell as the smallest living unit. Although we are witnessing a golden age of life sciences, we are ironically still far from giving a convincing answer to this question. With the aim to examines potential source of energy available to protocells on early Earth and/or elsewhere and mechanisms by which the energy could be used to drive polymer synthesis, experiments aimed at revealing the ability of meteorites and some terrestrial rocks to perform catalytic reactions operative in present-day life have been performed. 1. Indroduction The aim of this work is to present and discuss results of recent and ongoing wet-lab experiments supporting Multiple Root Genesis Hypothesis (MuGeRo) already proposed elsewhere [1] seeking approaches surrounding the mysterious primeval steps of life emergence on Earth or on planets around distant stars beyond our Galaxy. This is an additional hypothesis to that microbial or early forms of life were already present in our solar system at the time of our Earth’s formation so that we can reconsider that panspermia and abiogenesis are not rival theories but complementary theories [2]. Life on Earth is carbon-based, uses water as solvent, and photosynthesis and chemosynthesis as way to obtain energy. Following a bottom-up approach, I utilized as a model for the emergence of earliest life on Earth, the self-organizing M4 material that I’m producing from L6 condrites and some terrestrial rocks and minerals (olivine and magnetite ) [3]. 2. Figures 3. Summary and Conclusions Searching for the very first instants of life on Earth, with several hypotheses in play [4], the challenge has been to replicate the conditions that could have allowed the emergence of early life to emerge. I developed a new approach to stimulate physicochemical processes that may have led to the emergence of the first life forms from inanimate matter on Earth or Earth-like planets via photo-metabolic pathways. My studies does not starts from ground zero, but provide evidence of non-enzymatic catalysis that modifies sugars, aminoacids, urea and other molecules produced in the prebiotic environments on the planets or satellites of our solar system by investigating the effect of physico-chemical stress on the formation of the metal-organic material M4 [3]. References [1] del Gaudio, R.: Understanding the key requirement and the conditions that sparked life on Earth and beyond:clues and new knowledges supporting MuGeRo hypothesis., Europlanet Science Congress 2020, online, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2020-167, 2020. [2] del Gaudio, R.: Transition from Non-living to living Matter: can integration of MuGeRo hypothesis and synthetic prebiotic biology laboratory approach shed light on the origin of Life? , Europlanet Science Congress 2021, online, 13–24 Sep 2021, EPSC2021-347, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2021-347, 2021. [3] Geraci, G., D’Argenio, B., del Gaudio R. Patent US9328337 B2, granted, 2016. [4] Bartlett, S. and Wong, L., Defining Lyfe in the Universe: From Three Privileged Functions to Four Pillars Life 2020, 10(4), 42; https://doi.org/10.3390/life10040042

Understanding the origin of life (OoL) remains one of the most challenging challenges today with many scientific questions still unanswered. The complexity of the problem of the origin of life has spawned a large number of possible evolutionary scenarios. Their number, however, can be dramatically reduced by the simultaneous consideration of various bioenergetic, physical, and geological constraints. It is a widely accepted hypothesis that life originated from inanimate matter, being somehow a synthetic product of molecular organic aggregates, and as such the result of a kind of synthetic prebiotic biology [1]. In a multiverse perspective, supported by experimental data, I have already proposed the MuGeRo hypothesis in which both cosmic biotic “infection” and abiotic geochemistry contributing to trigger the emergence of life on Earth and beyond [2]. I proposed that spontaneous reactions demonstrated to occur in the environment supposed to exist in the young Earth might have provided the starting organic molecules on which peculiar component of rock (also meteorites) might have act as catalysts of molecular complexity initiating early life processes that, as has been proposed from other Authors are spontaneously and inevitable. In recent decades, the new scientific discipline of synthetic biology has set ambitious goals by pursuing the full design and manufacture of complete genetic circuits, or entire genomes, or even the whole minimal life in the laboratory. I hold that synthetic biology could also throw new and interesting perspectives on the topic of the origins of life and that, moreover, it could help challenge the most commonly accepted definitions of life, thus changing the way we might rethink life and its origins. Infact, following the bottom-up approach I reported experimental evidence that both extraterrestrial and terrestrial minerals and rocks containing iron produces the self-organizing M4 material (Fig.1 a-h) endowed of amino sugar-driven prebiotic synthetic processes supporting abiogenesis [2,3]. This is in addition to the hypothesis that early forms of life were already present in our solar system at the time of Earth formation [4]. Following the bottom-up approach and using the self-organized M4 material [5] obtained from meteorites and terrestrial rocks and minerals as a model for the emergence and early evolution of life on Earth, this work proposes an evolutionary scenario that satisfies the known constraints by proposing that life on Earth emerged, fueled by solar radiation, from non-enzymatic, photochemical and self-sustaining reactions, surviving through some form of redox chemistry. The M4 material autopoietically self-assembled on hypersthenic chondrite or siderite and on fragments of same terrestrial rocks containing iron could have contributed to the chemical evolution of biomolecules by own catalytic activities that modify sugars and amino acids produced in the prebiotic environments. Here I’m proposing that these non-enzymatic, self-sustaining, photochemical reactions might be a primitive examples of reaction network supporting abiogenic development of early life on Earth and/or beyond. Indeed, these non-enzymatic reactions appear efficient enough to provide the variety and abundance of biologically favorable molecules from which Darwinian selection operating at molecular level may have seeded protometabolic reaction in the pre-biotic contexts. The aim of this work here is to present and discuss the new results of my ongoing experiments compared to those obtained in the past and more recently. Indeed, the results that I obtained so far do not prove or exclude the possibility that M4 materials could be a kind of non-conventional form of pre-terrestrial life or earthly early life but demonstrate that they are certainly the results of reactions depending on mineral or rock (meteorites too) that might be considered prebiotic catalysis probably responsible for the emergence of a large pre-biotic pool of biologically favorable molecules. Furthermore, I proposed that the photo-geochemical abiotic reactions could have given rise to a variety of independent biogenic events leading to a plurality of Darwinian Initial Life Forms (IDAs) from which the earliest forms of terrestrial life emerged giving rise to more than one LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor). References 1.Longo, A. and Damer, B: Factoring origin of Life Hypotheses into the Search for Life in the Solar System and Beyond., Life, 2020, 10, 5:52, https://doi.org/10.3390/life10050052 2.del Gaudio, R.: Understanding the key requirement and the conditions that sparked life on Earth and beyond:clues and new knowledges supporting MuGeRo hypothesis., Europlanet Science Congress 2020, online, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2020-167, 2020. 3.del Gaudio, R.,: 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., Europlanet Science Congress-DPS Joint Meeting 2019, Vol. 13, EPSC-DPS2019-80-1 EPSC-DPS2019-80-1. 4. Geraci, G., del Gaudio, R., D'Argenio, B., Rendiconti Lincei, Vol. 12, pp. 51-68, 2001. 5. Geraci, G., D’Argenio, B., del Gaudio R. Patent US9328337 B2, granted, 2016.