What forms of energy, and which energy flows created the opportunity for the polymer based molecular organization that led to life?
What can current environments, with their many energy sources and myriad microbes, teach us about energy dissipation as it relates to organism replication, ecology, and evolution?
What information is contained in the oldest traces of life on the planet, and how can we relate this information to specific evolutionary processes such as enzyme evolution?
Which types of molecules were used in early energy processes? How did these molecules contribute to the origin of life?