LIFE could not have arisen from an “ancestral commune” in which rudimentary life forms, not yet sophisticated enough to survive independently, pooled their metabolic talents. That is the conclusion reached by a Canadian mathematician who has analysed the interactions among such a loose-knit group of protocells.
If he is right, it undermines a leading modern view on the origin of life. In recent years, geneticists have traced the lineage of more than 30 genes all the way back to the base of the tree of life, and have found that no single origin fits all genes. This puzzling result led…
