The origin of life is a fascinating, unresolved problem whose deciphering would have
important scientific, epistemological and social implications. Over time, philosophers and …

How and where did life on Earth originate? To date, various environments have been
proposed as plausible sites for the origin of life. However, discussions have focused on a …

The chemistry of abiotic nucleotide synthesis of RNA and DNA in the context of their
prebiotic origins on early earth is a continuing challenge. How did (or how can) the …

Over the last 70 years, prebiotic chemists have been very successful in synthesizing the
molecules of life, from amino acids to nucleotides. Yet there is strikingly little resemblance …

Harnessing energy as ion gradients across membranes is as universal as the genetic code.
We leverage new insights into anaerobe metabolism to propose geochemical origins that …

A major goal of synthetic biology is to understand the transition between non-living matter
and life. The bottom-up development of an artificial cell would provide a minimal system with …

This paper presents a reformulation of the submarine alkaline hydrothermal theory for the
emergence of life in response to recent experimental findings. The theory views life, like …

Phosphate is central to the origin of life because it is a key component of nucleotides in
genetic molecules, phospholipid cell membranes, and energy transfer molecules such as …

All life on Earth is built of organic molecules, so the primordial sources of reduced carbon
remain a major open question in studies of the origin of life. A variant of the alkaline …

The mineral greigite presents similar surface structures to the active sites found in many
modern-day enzymes. We show that particles of greigite can reduce CO2 under ambient …