OK, I was being a bit flippant sounding.
I cannot say that I know the answer. It is tempting to wonder if the seeds of life might have drifted through space the way dandelion seeds float through the air. It is very difficult to come up with a good scenario that persuasively shows that life really started as an RNA world and gradually hooked on more things. There are some persuasive experiments, but always issues. More interesting about this article is that panspermia may not have just happened once, but at least twice. I have very mixed feelings about the idea, but thank you for pointing me to the article all the same. If I don’t get to it before the thread expires, I’ll get to it some time at least.