An international team composed of researchers from Japan, Malaysia, the United Kingdom and Germany recently proposed a new framework for the origin of life, believing that the early "viscous gel" structure attached to solid surfaces may have provided a key environment for life's transition from inorganic chemistry to organic systems. Relevant results have been published in the journal "ChemSystemsChem".
The origin of life has always been one of the most difficult mysteries in science. Since it is impossible to directly trace back to the moment when life on Earth was first formed, researchers can only construct reasonable scenarios within the constraints of chemistry, physics and geology. Tony Z. Jia, co-corresponding author of this study and professor at Hiroshima University, pointed out that many existing theories focus on the functions of biomolecules and biopolymers, but the framework proposed by the team brings the role of "gel" into the core of the discussion of the origin of life.
The research team proposed the so-called "prebiotic gel-first" model, which assumes that before the emergence of cells, there were a large number of gel-like matrices attached to rocks, minerals or other solid surfaces in the early environment of the Earth. These viscous, semi-solid structures are similar in morphology to common modern microbial biofilms. Combining relevant discoveries in soft matter chemistry and contemporary biology, researchers believe that these primitive gels provided the necessary spatial structure and basic functions for early complex chemical systems. By trapping and organizing molecules in localized areas, such prebiotic gels hold the promise of overcoming several key obstacles in prebiotic chemistry by enabling their enrichment, selective retention, and buffering against environmental changes.
In such a gel environment, simple chemical systems may gradually evolve behaviors similar to primitive metabolism and self-replication, laying the foundation for true biological evolution. Kuhan Chandru, a co-author of the paper and a researcher at the Space Science Center of Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, said that this is just one of many models of the origin of life, but the element of "gel" has been relatively ignored in related research for a long time, so the team tried to integrate the clues scattered in different studies into a coherent narrative with the original gel as the protagonist.
This theory has also been extended to the field of astrobiology. Researchers propose that on other planets or satellites, there may be "gel-like film" structures that function similarly to Earth's biofilms but are composed of completely different chemical components. The team calls this type of hypothetical system "Xeno-films" and believes that future life detection missions may not be limited to searching for Earth-style organic molecules, but should pay more attention to whether there are surface structures with the ability to concentrate, protect and organize chemical substances. This perspective has, to a certain extent, broadened the scientific community’s imagination of what extraterrestrial life might look like.
Next, the research team plans to further test this model in the laboratory, for example, using simple chemicals to construct similar gel structures under simulated early Earth environmental conditions, and systematically examine the specific capabilities of these gels in molecular enrichment, reaction promotion, and the formation of "original functions." Ramona Khanum, one of the first authors of the paper, expressed the hope that this work will not only promote the experimental verification of the "prebiogel-first" model itself, but also inspire more scholars to re-examine ideas about the origin of life that have not yet been fully explored.
It is reported that the research was supported by the Mobile Research Fund of the University of Leeds, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, the Mizuho Science Promotion Foundation and other institutions. The paper is titled "Prebiotic Gels as the Cradle of Life" and will be officially published on November 19, 2025.
Compiled from /ScitechDaily