The origin of life
How did lifeless chemistry on the early Earth cross the line into living, replicating cells?
What makes this fascinating
Biology's chicken-and-egg — DNA needs proteins to copy it, and proteins need DNA to be built. Which came first?
The RNA world — RNA can both store information and catalyze reactions, making it the leading candidate for the first self-replicating molecule.
From chemistry to life — Vents and lightning-driven chemistry readily make amino acids; bridging from those building blocks to a living, replicating cell is the unsolved leap.
Frequently asked questions
- How did life begin on Earth?
- No one knows for certain. The step from non-living chemistry to self-replicating, metabolizing cells — abiogenesis — is unsolved. Leading ideas include an RNA world, hydrothermal vents, and mineral surfaces, but none has been demonstrated end to end.
- What is abiogenesis?
- Abiogenesis is the natural origin of living organisms from non-living matter — the chemistry that crossed the line into biology on the early Earth, roughly 4 billion years ago.
- Has the origin of life been recreated in a lab?
- Not fully. Experiments from Miller–Urey onward have produced amino acids and even self-copying RNA fragments, but no one has assembled a living cell from raw chemistry.
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Ready to climb?
Learn it the whole way up — from the fundamentals to the frontier.