The origin of life on Earth is a set of paradoxes. In order for life to have gotten started, there must have been a genetic molecule something like DNA or RNA capable of passing along blueprints for making proteins, the workhorse molecules of life. But modern cells can’t copy DNA and RNA without the help of proteins themselves. To make matters more vexing, none of these molecules can do their jobs without fatty lipids, which provide the membranes that cells need to hold their contents inside. And in yet another chicken-and-egg complication, protein based enzymes, encoded by genetic molecules, are needed to synthesize lipids.
