re: Are key aspects of early biochemistry universal - literally?
Intriguing. I know one goal is to model protein folding given another thousandfold increase in CPU power. Assuming that protein folding and amino acid formation follow computable physical laws even though complex, we should get some insight into the universality or not of these precursors to living systems this century. If however the computer models are incomplete (simplified for computability or simplified because of lack of data), rife with assumptions and empirical rules, I won't have any confidence in them. Petaflops do not guarantee correctness.