Now, if we get to complex life and we get beyond organic life forms into artificial intelligence, post-biological, then anything goes and maybe that'… - Nick Lane

It would be a little disappointing if we didn't even find bacteria in our own solar system. I would be rather surprised to find what I would describe as large, morphologically complex life. ...It only arose once on earth. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's improbable... but it does raise some interesting questions about why, and... I think we can apply principles to it, and those principles effectively are why do bacteria and , as assistive groups to the bacteria... They're biochemically very complex. They're genetically very complex. They're kind of structured in a different way where they have large, complex metagenomes, but... I doubt very much that we'll ever find anything of the [morphological] level of complexity of a flea, composed of bacterial cells.

The s were acquired by a eukaryotic cell that was already a fully fledged eukaryotic cell.

[B]iochemical pathways that produce the basic building blocks of life are... conserved across practically all cells.