While it is generally agreed that some kind of replicating non-living compounds were the precursors of life, there is much debate of their possible chemical nature. Metabolism-first approaches propose that mutually catalytic sets of simple organic molecules could be capable of self-replication and rudimentary chemical evolution. In particular, the GARD model, depicting assemblies of amphiphilic molecules, has received considerable interest. The system propagates compositional information across generations and is suggested to be a target of natural selection. However, evolutionary simulations indicate that the system lacks selectability (i.e. it cannot substantially depart from the asymptotic steady-state solution already built-in in the dynamical equations) due to excessive mutation rates that push the population above the Eigenian error threshold. We elaborate on the lessons learnt from the example of the GARD model and, more widely, on the issue of evolvability, and discuss the implications for similar metabolism-first scenarios.
