A spark plug can make a spark, but no one would say a spark plug can build a car. In much the same way, a chemical reaction can do one useful job without creating a living cell. Yet new research in Science Advances suggests that simple chemical reactions may help explain how early life arose.1 Although the study is valuable, its results point to a key problem: one chemical step does not explain the origin of a complete living system.
The researchers studied 420 chemical reactions found in cells.1 These reactions help make amino acids, parts of RNA, vitamins, and other needed materials. The team compared genes, proteins, and chemical pathways found in living things today. From these data, they built a model of how early cell chemistry may have formed.
Their model begins with the last universal common ancestor, or LUCA. They suggest that LUCA had enzymes for about half of the reactions they studied. Additional reactions may have been driven by metals near hot-water vents.1 The team tested one part of this idea in the lab and found that the metal palladium could help phosphite add phosphate groups to certain molecules.1 This is important because adding a phosphate group produces ATP, a molecule that stores and transfers energy needed for cellular work.
The experiment shows that metals can help certain reactions occur, and that is where an engineering view lends some insight. A working machine needs more than parts that can perform separate tasks. The parts must be arranged, controlled, and linked so the whole system works. A cell faces the same challenge on a far greater scale. It must store coded data in DNA, copy that data, make proteins, control energy, maintain a membrane, repair damage, remove waste, and reproduce, all in the right place and at the right time.
But just because palladium assisted one reaction doesn’t mean it explains how the whole system originated. That is the first problem the study presents.
There is another issue. The model does not begin with bare chemicals. It begins with LUCA already having a genetic code and many enzymes.1 Heinrich Heine University noted that the chemical reactions studied are widely shared among living things, much like the genetic code itself.2 Other conventional scientists have proposed that LUCA was already quite complex. A 2024 study estimated that it had at least 2.5 million DNA base pairs and about 2,600 proteins.3 Those estimates are based on models, but they show that organized, functional biology was already present.
From a creation standpoint, the chemistry itself is not surprising. Matter has stable properties, and metals can act as useful catalysts as they modify and speed chemical reactions, just as the palladium did. But a catalyst is not a cell—it’s not a form of life. ICR researchers have long pointed out that origin-of-life models must explain far more than how a few organic, lifeless chemicals form.4
This study therefore reveals an important divide. Chemistry can explain how some reactions happen, but it doesn’t yet explain how those reactions became a coded, controlled, self-reproducing system. The more clearly we see system-level design in cells, the stronger indication we have of their Creator’s workmanship.
References
- Mrnjavac, N. et al. 2026. Intermediate Stages in the Origin of Metabolism at a Phosphorylating Hydrothermal Vent. Science Advances. 12 (32).
- Two Origins of Life. Heinrich Heine University news release. Posted on hhu.de August 5, 2026.
- Moody, E. R. R. et al. 2024. The Nature of the Last Universal Common Ancestor and Its Impact on the Early Earth System. Nature Ecology & Evolution. 8 (9): 1654–1666.
- Boyle, M. J. 2025. The Myth of Abiogenesis. Acts & Facts. 54 (5): 6–7.
* Dr. Corrado earned a Ph.D. in systems engineering from Colorado State University and a Th.M. from Liberty University. He is a freelance contributor to ICR’s Creation Science Update, works in the nuclear industry, and is a Captain in the U.S. Naval Reserve.
