The role of minerals in prebiotic evolution: Implications for identifying worlds with the potential for life's origin

Understanding the origin of life requires explaining how abiotic molecules transitioned into the first living systems within plausible geological settings. Increasing evidence suggests minerals as active participants in prebiotic evolution. By adsorbing and concentrating reactants, catalyzing key reactions, stabilizing intermediates, and providing protective microenvironments, minerals may have helped to overcome thermodynamic and kinetic barriers, thereby enabling a cascade of prebiotic reactions to proceed toward the earliest life. In this review, we synthesize current experimental and theoretical advances to examine the contributions of minerals across the successive stages of prebiotic chemistry, from the formation of simple precursors and biomolecular monomers to polymerization, compartmentalization, and protocell assembly. We propose that these processes were unlikely to have unfolded within a single environment because different prebiotic reactions imposed distinct physicochemical demands. Instead, prebiotic evolution probably proceeded through complementary reactions distributed among multiple geological settings, including hydrothermal vents, terrestrial hot springs, and potentially extraterrestrial niches, with intermediates being preserved and then transported across spatial and temporal geological scales to link otherwise disconnected evolutionary stages. Building on this view, we identify specific minerals capable of facilitating key reactions at different stages of prebiotic evolution and propose that their combined occurrence as characteristic mineral assemblages may provide mineralogical indicators for assessing a planet's geological potential to support life's emergence. This mineral-centered perspective complements conventional biosignature-based approaches in astrobiology, and highlights mineralogy as a powerful tool in the ongoing search for habitable worlds and life beyond Earth.