‘Missing link’ in origin of life found

Scientists, including those of Indian origin, have discovered a compound that may have played a crucial role in the origin of life on Earth. Researchers at the Scripps Research Institute in the U.S. hypothesised that a chemical reaction called phosphorylation may have been crucial for the assembly of three key ingredients in early life forms. These ingredients are short strands of nucleotides to store genetic information, short chains of amino acids (peptides) to do the main work of cells, and lipids to form encapsulating structures such as cell walls. No one has ever found a phosphorylating agent before that was plausibly present on early Earth,