is the making of a cell wall. We simply cannot get to life as we know it without this membrane or cell wall.
The underlying chemistry of RNA occurrence and replication seems rather tractable, but nothing we know works in the end without a compartment that allows for the control of ions and electrons.
There is work on this. I thought e.g that fatty acids would be hard to come by (a greasy tail with a salty tip, the basis for cell membranes, the greasy bits all hide from water and hence dissolve into each other, the salty tip interacts with water and walla, one has a lipid layer. But it seems it is argued fatty acids may have been common.
Some tractable reading:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-11/mgh-rfa112213.php
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