New global study proposes fresh outlook into answering how life on Earth began

How did life first emerge on Earth? A team of scientists from Japan, Malaysia, the UK and Germany believes the answer may be found in sticky, surface-bound gels that existed long before the first true cells appeared.

Their new research offers a different way to think about how life began on our planet—and broadens the possibilities for what life might look like on other worlds, as highlighted in an article published by SciTechDaily.

The origin of life remains one of science’s most enduring puzzles. While the first steps of life can’t be observed directly, scientists continue to build testable models based on chemistry, physics, and geology.

“While many theories focus on the function of biomolecules and biopolymers, our theory instead incorporates the role of gels at the origins of life,” said Tony Z. Jia, professor at Hiroshima University and a co-lead author of the study, which has been published in the journal ChemSystemsChem.

In their “prebiotic gel-first” model, the researchers suggest that life may have started within semi-solid gel structures attached to surfaces—materials similar to today’s microbial biofilms. These thin layers, common on rocks, water surfaces, and man-made objects, are made by microorganisms that live in close association.

Drawing on soft-matter chemistry and modern biological observations, the paper argues that early gel-like structures could have offered the physical framework and functions needed for primitive chemical systems to grow increasingly complex, long before the first cells formed.

By trapping and organising molecules, these primitive gels may have helped overcome major hurdles in pre-life chemistry by allowing molecular concentration, selective retention, and protection from environmental fluctuations. Within such gels, early chemical networks might have developed simple metabolic activity or self-replication, laying the foundation for later biological evolution.

“This is just one theory among many in the vast landscape of origin-of-life research,” said Kuhan Chandru, research scientist at the Space Science Centre, National University of Malaysia (UKM) and co-lead author of the study. “However, since the role of gels has been largely overlooked, we wanted to synthesise scattered studies into a cohesive narrative that puts primitive gels at the forefront of the discussion.”

The research also extends the idea to the search for extraterrestrial life. The team proposes that gel-like structures—potential “Xeno-films”—might form on other planets and moons, composed of whatever chemical resources are available there. Instead of focusing only on specific organic molecules, scientists might look for unusual structures that function like biofilms but arise from different building blocks.

The team now plans to test their model by experimenting with gels made from simple chemicals under conditions that mimic early Earth. They hope to determine how such gels may have formed and what chemical capabilities they could have offered to the first proto-living systems.

By Nazrin Sadigova