© KEVIN HANDOrigin-of-life researchers have traditionally been categorized into a “genetics first” camp, which ascribes to the notion that some sort of information molecule was a necessary prerequisite for life, and a “metabolism first” group, in which studies focus on understanding the chemical cycles that led to the synthesis of organic molecules. But in a paper published this week (March 16) in Nature, scientists presented evidence that both genetics and metabolism may have arisen simultaneously, via a reaction involving ?hydrogen cyanide and hydrogen sulfide, driven by ultraviolet (UV) light.

“This is a very important paper,” Jack Szostak, a molecular biologist and origin-of-life researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, told Science. “It proposes for the first time a scenario by which almost all of the essential building blocks for life could be assembled in one geological setting.”

In 2009, John Sutherland of the Medical Research Council Laboratory...