New Clues to Chemical origin of metabolism

Popular speculations about how life evolved out of a soup of chemicals on the early Earth often focus on the origins of DNA and RNA , the molecules of genetic information. But the genesis of genes is only one of the mysteries that origin-of-life theories must reckon with. Another is the rise of metabolism — the biochemical processes inside cells that make life possible by continuously drawing energy from the environment and directing it into the assembly of vital molecules. It’s a complex problem on which there has been little headway.