The Origins of Life: An uncanny resemblance to the old Protein Folding Problem

How did the first living cells come into being from the earth's molecular soup 4 billion years ago? Despite much speculation – maybe RNA came first, or proteins, or chemical networks – there's not yet a consensus origins story. New insights are coming from thinking not just about life's molecules, but about biology's process of adaptation. The Darwinian evolution process must have preceded the origins of life. This, and the apparent needle-in-a-haystack nature of sequence space, indicate a key role of protein synthesis and folding in life's origins.