WERE little balls of fat the precursors for life on Earth? These chubby balls can reproduce and evolve all by themselves in computer simulations, and can even help form the long chains of RNA that are vital for life as we know it.
The most popular theory for how life originated is the "RNA world", which says self-replicating RNA molecules started the process off. But how did complex chains of RNA arise from simple organic molecules floating in the primordial soup?
One possibility is that nucleotides - building blocks of RNA - could stick to the surface of clay particles. This would concentrate the molecules, helping them join together. Others believe lipid membranes enclosed groups of simple molecules into tight compartments, allowing them to connect.
But Doron Lancet, a biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, is proposing a radical alternative - the "lipid world". He argues that ...
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