{
  "id": 190390,
  "title": "A New Study Points to Two Origins of Life on Earth by Tracing Early Chemical Reactions in Single-Celled Organisms",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/05/a-new-study-points-to-two-origins-of-life-on-earth-by-tracing-early",
  "topic": "culture",
  "section": "Culture",
  "published": "2026-08-05T19:13:11.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Smithsonian",
    "slug": "smithsonian",
    "url": "https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/a-new-study-points-to-two-origins-of-life-on-earth-by-tracing-early-chemical-reactions-in-single-celled-organisms-180989260/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "A new scientific study suggests that life on Earth may have originated in two separate events, according to researchers who traced the evolution of early chemical reactions in single-celled organisms. The research, published in Science Advances, indicates that the last universal common ancestor (LUCA), the mysterious organism that gave rise to all life, relied primarily on environmental elements for metabolism. LUCA used small organic molecules and metals from its surroundings to carry out about half of the core metabolic reactions that fuel energy production, while the other half were performed by small organic molecules. Over time, some of these metal-catalyzed reactions were replaced with more efficient enzymes as proteins evolved to perform the same functions. This process of replacing geochemical reactions with enzyme-catalyzed reactions gave rise to the coalescence of metabolism in early life forms, according to the study's senior author, William Martin, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Düsseldorf in Germany. The findings support the theory that bacteria and archaea, two of the three domains of life, evolved independently from LUCA. The researchers compared the genetic information of modern bacteria and archaea to reconstruct their evolutionary history, finding that both groups inherited enzymes from LUCA, but also developed unique enzymes to replace the same metal-catalyzed reactions. This discovery implies that bacteria and archaea could not have evolved from each other, but rather emerged independently from a common ancestor.",
  "summary": "The work challenges the assumption that all life descended from one free-living cell. Instead, it suggests that two microbial lineages, the bacteria and archaea, evolved independently from a primordial, nonliving ancestor",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}