Where life began? (Image: Erlend Haarberg/naturepl.com)
IT BEGAN when something fell apart. Somewhere on Earth, over 3.5 billion years ago, a bubble of fat may have spontaneously broken into smaller ones, giving rise to one of life’s most fundamental properties – the ability to make copies of itself.
That’s according to of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Boston, who has demonstrated this simple division in the lab. Versions of it are found in many bacteria today, lending some credence to the theory. The simplified cell division also doesn’t require any genes or the complex machinery modern cells…
