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