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

Now it's possible to have some kind of protocell with some form of metabolism without any genetic heredity. It's possible in principle. Is it alive?

I do like this quote from Simon Conway Morris that if the aliens call then don't pick up the phone. I'm not sure I'd really like to meet any of them very much. Perhaps... meeting bacteria would be the least scary... [T]he chances of meeting aliens is so remote that I haven't really troubled myself very much about it. It would be nice to think that if we did, somehow they would be a superior intelligence... they would have solved a lot of the problems of aggression and whatever else that humans have, but I fear not. I fear that it would be the opposite, that... natural selection has a knack of producing nastiness in intelligence.

Thew problem here for me is that I'm in a biology department and is still somewhat frowned upon by a lot of biologists who would see it as a form of speculation. So the courses that I teach are about life on earth and they're not so much about life in the Universe... [I]t is something that I should develop, I think.