Autopoiesis is just one of several current theories of life, including the chemoton[20] of Tibor Gánti, the hypercycle of Manfred Eigen and Peter Schuster,[21] [22] [23] the (M,R) systems[24][25] of Robert Rosen, and the autocatalytic sets[26] of Stuart Kauffman, similar to an earlier proposal by Freeman Dyson.[27] All of these (including autopoiesis) found their original inspiration in Erwin Schrödinger's book What is Life?[28] but at first they appear to have little in common with one another, largely because the authors did not communicate with one another, and none of them made any reference in their principal publications to any of the other theories.

In the second idea, German chemist Manfred Eigen described what he called a “hypercycle,” in which several autocatalytic sets combine to form a single larger one. Eigen’s variant introduces a crucial distinction: In a hypercycle, some of the chemicals are genes and are therefore made of DNA or some other nucleic acid, while others are proteins that are made-to-order based on the information in the genes. This system could evolve based on changes—mutations—in the genes, a function that Kauffman’s model lacked.