Chance and Necessity in Alien Biochemistry: Universal Prebiotic Traits and Path-Dependent Evolution on Earth-Like Worlds

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Davila and McKay argue that life on Earth-like worlds arises from a blend of universal prebiotic building blocks and evolution-driven contingency, so alien biochemistries would share fundamental motifs but exhibit unique, history-shaped traits, guiding biomarker searches to look for both universal features and distinctive path-dependent signatures.

Chance and necessity in biochemistry: implications for the search for extraterrestrial biomarkers in Earth-like environments - PubMed
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Chance and necessity in biochemistry: implications for the search for extraterrestrial biomarkers in Earth-like environments - PubMed

In this paper, we examine a restricted subset of the question of possible alien biochemistries. That is, we look into how different life might be if it emerged in environments similar to that required for life on Earth. We advocate a principle of chance and necessity in biochemistry. According to th …