In 2009, Brown University biology professor Ken Miller wrote in the journal New Scientist that "the most profound unsolved problem in biology is the origin of life itself."¹

Researchers have tried for decades to replicate the conditions and compounds they think were necessary for the first living cell to evolve. Their experimental failures have collectively sent the clear message that such an event is extremely unlikely or even impossible. Even some of the most basic chemicals found in all cells require already-intact cells to make and maintain more.

by Dr. Charles McCombs, Ph.D., and Brian Thomas, M.S.*

UK researchers believe they may have “broken new ground” in the ongoing quest to find out how living cells first evolved.

Despite “decades of persistent failure to create life by the ‘spark in the soup’ method,”¹ evolutionary biochemists are still trying to find an exclusively naturalistic explanation for how the first cell developed. Many possible chemical precursors to life have been systematically ruled out by rigorous experiments.