Investigating the Origins of Metabolism

Scientists at the University of Cambridge (Cambridge, UK) have reconstructed the early conditions of the Earth?s oceans to find that spontaneous chemical reactions could have generated the first biological molecules, before the evolution of organisms or the existence of enzymes.1 The study published in the journal Molecular Systems Biology presents data collected from liquid chromatography?triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (LC–QTOF–MS) suggesting that reactions central to our core metabolism could have spontaneously occurred.