LiveScience.com - How Life Began: New Research Suggests Simple Approach: "Somewhere on Earth, close to 4 billion years ago, a set of molecular reactions flipped a switch and became life. Scientists try to imagine this animating event by simplifying the processes that characterize living things. New research suggests the simplification needs to go further.

All currently known organisms rely on DNA to replicate and proteins to run cellular machinery, but these large molecules—intricate weaves of thousands of atoms—are not likely to have been around for the first organisms to use. "