Prebiotic Legacy as the Physical Foundation of Life

Life is commonly investigated through biochemical processes in modern cells, which has led to the implicit identification of life with biochemical optimization. This abstract proposes an alternative perspective in which life is understood as a physical process operating far from equilibrium, in the sense of dissipative structures. From this viewpoint, biochemical regulation represents a secondary evolutionary layer that stabilizes and constrains more fundamental physical dynamics rather than defining life itself. Prebiotic vesicles are introduced as a key reference system for accessing this physical foundation of life. Although they lack genetic codes and complex metabolic networks, they exhibit structure formation, energy-driven dynamics, hysteresis, and process-based memory encoded in membrane properties. We argue that modern cells retain this prebiotic legacy within their membranes, but that it is largely obscured by biochemical optimization. Using prebiotic vesicles as a physical magnifying lens offers a way to study universal principles of membrane dynamics and non-equilibrium organization without dismantling the modern cell. This perspective reframes the origin and nature of life as a time-dependent, energy-driven process rather than a purely biochemical system.