Question

What does it mean to state that life is an autocatalytic process?

Answer 1

A single chemical reaction is said to be autocatalytic if one of the reaction products is also a catalyst for the same or a coupled reaction. If the product of a reaction acts as a catalyst for the reaction, it is referred as an autocatalytic reaction. If we see the origin of life, life is a complex interplay among RNA, DNA, and proteins. Life can sustain as a functionally closed and self-sustaining chemical reaction network. Without catalysts, life would most likely not be possible at all, because the chemical reactions vital for life would not happen fast enough, and they would not be synchronized with one another. In life, every reaction in the subset is catalyzed by at least one molecule from the subset like water, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, iron and every molecule in the subset can be produced from the food set by a series of reactions from this subset only. So, we can say that the life is an autocatalytic process.