Chemical Evolution and the Origin of Life

How did life begin on the early Earth? We know that life today is driven by the universal laws of chemistry and physics. By applying these laws over the past—fifty years, en- mous progress has been made in understanding the molecular mechanisms that are the foundations of the living state. For instance, just a decade ago, the first human genome was published, all three billion base pairs. Using X-ray diffraction data from crystals, we can see how an enzyme molecule or a photosynthetic react...