Origins for Everyone

Abstract

The origin of life on Earth remains a mystery, but the question can still be approached with scientific rigor. Identifying life's origins requires the definition of life itself, which has been described as a self-sustaining system capable of Darwinian evolution, although it's also possible that there is no good scientific definition. All known living systems contain linear strings of information based on DNA, a molecule that makes Darwinian evolution possible through replication and mutation. This review explains the scientific concepts and issues underlying the origin of life, possible mechanisms of origins, and the features of living systems that can arguably be viewed as an inevitable consequence of the earliest molecules.