{"id":242584,"date":"2026-08-12T05:19:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T10:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/did-cellular-life-begin-twice-new-study-points-to-two-independent-origins"},"modified":"2026-08-12T05:19:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T10:19:10","slug":"did-cellular-life-begin-twice-new-study-points-to-two-independent-origins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/08\/did-cellular-life-begin-twice-new-study-points-to-two-independent-origins","title":{"rendered":"Did Cellular Life Begin Twice? New Study Points to Two Independent Origins"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/did-cellular-life-begin-twice-new-study-points-to-two-independent-origins2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>Early metabolism may have begun as a mix of metal and enzyme catalysis before bacteria and archaea independently evolved into free-living cells.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Four billion years ago, the chemistry that eventually became life may have been unfolding around hydrothermal vents, where naturally occurring metals helped drive reactions before cells possessed the full machinery they use today. Researchers at Heinrich Heine University D\u00fcsseldorf (HHU) and collaborating institutions have reconstructed part of that transition, tracing how metabolism and enzymes changed as the ancestors of bacteria and archaea began to diverge.<\/p>\n<p>The study, published in <em><i>Science Advances<\/i><\/em>, examined the chemical network early cells used to produce essential components of life and investigated how those reactions could have been powered. The researchers conclude that the transition to free-living bacteria and archaea may have occurred independently, even though both lineages share the same underlying genetic code.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Early metabolism may have begun as a mix of metal and enzyme catalysis before bacteria and archaea independently evolved into free-living cells. Four billion years ago, the chemistry that eventually became life may have been unfolding around hydrothermal vents, where naturally occurring metals helped drive reactions before cells possessed the full machinery they use today. [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,412],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-242584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chemistry","category-genetics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242584\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}