How Did Life Begin? Dividing Droplets Could Hold the Answer

A collaboration of physicists and biologists in Germany has found a simple mechanism that might have enabled liquid droplets to evolve into living cells in early Earth's primordial soup. Origin-of-life researchers have praised the minimalism of the idea. Ramin Golestanian, a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Oxford who was not involved in the research, called it a big achievement that suggests that "the general phenomenology of life formation is a lot easier than one might think." The central question about the origin of life has been how the first cells arose from primitive precursors. What were those precursors, dubbed "protocells," and how did they come alive?