What came first in the origin of life?
A research published in Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences rejects the theory that the origin of life stems from a system of self-catalytic molecules capable of experiencing Darwinian evolution without the need of RNA or DNA and their replication. The research, which was carried out with the participation of Mauro Santos, researcher of the Department of Genetics and Microbiology at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), has demonstrated that, through the analysis of what some researchers name “compound genomes”, these chemical networks cannot be considered evolutionary units because they lose properties which are essential for evolution when they reach a critical size and greater level of complexity. The North American Space Agency (NASA) defines life as a “self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution”. The scientific theories on the origin of life revolve around two main ideas: one focuses on genetics – with RNA or DNA replication as an essential condition
