The universal spectacle implicitly revealed to us by mechanomeric selection is an inspiring one, in which, wherever in the universe monomers and copolymers can be accumulated, sooner or later two such acting as enzymes and replicases capable of replicating (copying) one another (not necessarily of the same copolymer class, polyaminoacyl or polyester or whatever) will initiate an explosion of such replication, and life will begin.
Call such simplest life "merozoan", and such simplest living things "merozoans".
And throw in natural selection over a billion years and you arrive at people arguing over whether God has testicles or not.
It might be asked then, "Where are the merozoans here on Earth?"
The first and most obvious and most satisying answer of course is that we are all merozoans, bacteria, archaeans and viruses, amoebas and algae, plants, fungi and animals, contemporary versions N.x.y: See for example my "The Dual-Copolymer Proof of Evolution".
And even contemporary bacteria, archaeans and viruses are complex products of long evolutions (note that infectiousness is generally a well-evolved process, hence the host-specificity of most viruses).
But is it not possible that simpler, and even the simplest, merozoans may still be among us?
It is true that they would be out-competed in most ecological niches by their more highly-evolved relatives, but cannot some such still be around, some perhaps tumbling around abyssal volcanic vents, and other more evolved ones even acting as infectious agents?
This seems worth looking into.
[20120212 I couldn't argue if someone wanted to go with "merobes" and "meroba".]
