Synthesis of polyester gels via dehydration of 𝜶-hydroxy acids (𝜶HAs) is a plausible route to form primitive functional polymers. 𝜶HApolyester gels assemble into membraneless droplets upon rehydration in aqueous media that can segregate and compartmentalize early biomolecules. However, conditions for polyester synthesis and microdroplet assembly have yet to be broadly explored. Thus, the effects of heat and monomer chirality on dehydration synthesis and assembly of homopolyester microdroplets are investigated using microscopy and mass spectrometry. Lower dehydration temperatures (≤80 °C) are observed to result in shorter polyesters than higher temperatures (up to 150 °C). After rehydration of polyester products, droplet assembly propensity correlates with longer polymer length. Low temperature (40 °C) dehydration yields only short polyesters and nearly no droplet formation. Finally, polyesters derived from dehydration/rehydration synthesis of homochiral lactic acid and phenyllactic acid monomers are of equal length and with a similar propensity for droplet assembly as those derived from racemic starting materials. These results suggest that polyesters and microdroplets derived from them can form under a wide variety of temperatures and from different monomer chiralities, enabling many possibilities for such systems to have played a role in systemic self-organization during the origins of life.

The Panspermia hypothesis posits that either life's building blocks (molecular Panspermia) or life itself (organism‐based Panspermia) may have been interplanetarily transferred to facilitate the origins of life (OoL) on a given planet, complementing several current OoL frameworks. Although many spaceflight experiments were performed in the past to test for potential terrestrial organisms as Panspermia seeds, it is uncertain whether such organisms will likely “seed” a new planet even if they are able to survive spaceflight. Therefore, rather than using organisms, using abiotic chemicals as seeds has been proposed as part of the molecular Panspermia hypothesis. Here, as an extension of this hypothesis, we introduce and review the plausibility of a polymeric material‐based Panspermia seed (M‐BPS) as a theoretical concept, where the type of polymeric material that can function as a M‐BPS must be able to: (1) survive spaceflight and (2) “function”, i.e., contingently drive chemical evolution toward some form of abiogenesis once arriving on a foreign planet. We use polymeric gels as a model example of a potential M‐BPS. Polymeric gels that can be prebiotically synthesized on one planet (such as polyester gels) could be transferred to another planet via meteoritic transfer, where upon landing on a liquid bearing planet, can assemble into structures containing cellular‐like characteristics and functionalities. Such features presupposed that these gels can assemble into compartments through phase separation to accomplish relevant functions such as encapsulation of primitive metabolic, genetic and catalytic materials, exchange of these materials, motion, coalescence, and evolution. All of these functions can result in the gels' capability to alter local geochemical niches on other planets, thereby allowing chemical evolution to lead to OoL events.

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