Life on Earth originated in an intimate partnership between the nucleic acids (genetic instructions for all organisms) and small proteins called peptides, according to two new papers from biochemists and biologists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Auckland. Their “peptide-RNA” hypothesis contradicts the widely-held “RNA-world” hypothesis, which states that life originated from nucleic acids and only later evolved to include proteins.

The papers – one in Molecular Biology and Evolution, the other in Biosystems – showed how recent experimental studies of two enzyme super-families surmount the tough theoretical questions about how complex life emerged on Earth more than four billion years ago.

“Until now, it has been thought to be impossible to conduct experiments to penetrate the origins of genetics,” said co-author Charles Carter, PhD, professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the UNC School of Medicine. “But we have now shown that experimental results mesh beautifully with the ‘peptide-RNA’ theory, and so these experiments provide quite compelling answers to what happened at the beginning of life on Earth”.

The special attributes of the ancestral versions of these enzyme super-families, and the self-reinforcing feedback system they would have formed with the first genes and proteins, would have kick-started early biology and driven the first life forms toward greater diversity and complexity, the researchers said. (1)

Whenever we talk about resurrection we tend to say difficult it is for someone to believe it. It is something extraordinary after all, is it not? And yet… it seems that resurrection is not something so rare but rather something common! All it takes is to see the phenomenon from a different point of view.

Resurrection happens all the time!

In front of our very eyes!

And science is the first to acknowledge it!

We are created by simple dead matter and yet, we are now alive. We are made of soulless soil and yet, we grow up to the sky. We are thrown into a cold dark cosmos and yet, all we see is the light. We are living in a meaningless universe and yet, we constantly strive to discover a meaning which we somehow know it is there…

We are dead men. Lifeless sets of matter.

Who were born out of nothing.

Who got the breath of life and came to be.

Ask science. It will tell you that you are not supposed to even exist – let alone ponder on your own existence and on the meaning of your life. There is the proof you need. Inside every lab. Inside every scientific paper. Raw matter resurrected. Every passing second…