 Another debated issue in discussions about the fundamental properties of life is the relative priority of autonomy, openness and collaboration. Whereas much research in philosophy and origin of life has focused on individual organisms, recent insights from microbiology and synthetic biology have extended the focus on individual cells to also include the interactions of cell colonies and pangenomic populations (Dupré &amp; O’Malley 2009; Bich &amp; Green 2018; O’Malley et al. 2019). For example, synthetic models can be used to investigate the dynamics of colonies of giant oleate-based vesicles under hypothesized prebiotic conditions. For example, an experiment conducted by Carrara and colleagues (2012) showed that that the permeability of the vesicles to catalysts and macromolecules were much higher for the colonies, compared to individual vesicles. In some cases, the colonies also attracted each other and exchanged material. The results raise important questions about whether life has arisen from ‘cooperative mechanisms’ between prebiotic systems, and whether we need to rethink ontological assumptions about what constitutes a ‘unity of life’. Synthetic models can also be used to study the role of structural and cognitive interactions for biological identity and autonomy (Bich 2020). Meanwhile, research on minimal genomes and imagined artificial life forms can explore what is biologically possible beyond what is found in natural systems (Koskinen 2017; Knuttila &amp; Koskinen 2021). Synthetic biology, understood as a technoscience exploring the design of minimal and alternative life forms, thus has potential to address questions about universal biology beyond the historical question about how life originated (Simons 2021).