How Did Life Itself Come Into Existence?
If you’re reading this right now, you have a personal stake in answering the above question, that is, how did life come into existence? From the concepts of evolution (progression of life) to the origin of innovations meant to improve the quality of living a thousandfold, this is one of the few things that has been debated by scientific communities worldwide for centuries.
Before we delve into this topic, we need to address what exactly is life for us to understand how it can be identified. Now, this may seem obvious as you can just point to yourself and shout “life!” with a fervor akin to an eureka moment, but just bear with me. There are thousands of definitions all-encompassing this topic, so we’ll cover the black-and-white one necessary to understand this article: “Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from matter that does not. […]” (Wikipedia, para. 1).
Now that we addressed what we’ll be talking about, let’s touch upon the ideas that have been supported by members of scientific communities. There have been a slew of these theories, each one as different as the next. Some have ignored evolutionary standpoints in favor of supporting biblical citings that God created Adam and Eve and demanded that they procreate to foster future generations. Others have speculated mind-altering possibilities like life being formed out of stardust. There are even people who give into the idea that one day life just happened to occur, defeating the odds in a 1:4^300 fashion (in short, basically a near zero possibility).
But, for all the struggles of science, there has been a rising, consistent trend about one theory that encompasses quite a couple of already acknowledged objective realities about other environments: the assembly of cells to function like a team, the concepts of natural selection and evolution, and a really, really, really small chance.
First and foremost to this journey is the building blocks. Whether it would be a massive skyscraper or the physiological needs of human beings, life itself is no exception. In this case, its building blocks are cells, or “[…] the smallest, basic unit of life that is responsible for all of life’s processes […]” (BYJUS, para. 1).

Now, the concept of a really small chance is where this first comes in. While the possibility of a human just appearing fully formed is practically zero, the chance of an extremely improbable chemical reaction occurring is considerably more likely. After all, the universe’s formation and all it entails follows a similar line of reasoning, but that’s a digression.
Then comes the theory of evolution. Although we all know that chimpanzees turned into humans eventually (displayed by likeness in genes and similarities in physical features), cells undergo the same transformation. With the help of natural selection, that is, ‘survival of the fittest’ in short, these cells were able to continuously evolve and progress until they couldn’t do so anymore.
Although these cells didn’t have as much to differentiate themselves as other fully functioning species that we see currently, they still were able to adjust through replacing what they utilized to function as a means to enhance their efficiency. For instance, cells chose to swap out its original genetic material, RNA, with Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) given its improved stability and suppleness. If that’s not all, cells even incorporate other molecules like proteins to speed up the catalysts of chemical reactions, in other words, what’s the intermediary between them and them attaining their goal at performing their designated function. Their capabilities to evolve and adapt makes it known that they were the original pros at becoming the lean, mean, efficient machines that are in every living thing.
Finally, we arrive at how we went from microscopic cells to actual fairly visible matter. Although cells reach a limit when they form individually, that same limitation is overcome when multicellularity (or the combination of cells to perform a function) occurs. When this happens, cells finally quit going their separate ways and instead collide, enabling larger formations (such as complete organs) to come into existence.
Ironically, the formation of something as volatile and unpredictable as life came through a series of just as unlikely events, from extremely improbable reactions to survival of the fittest mantras in cells that can’t even speak to one another (or maybe they can and we just don’t know). But it does make some wonder as to what else has yet to be discovered? What else has yet to be formed from a series of unpredictable and yet possibly fated events?
Sources
- https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/are-we-really-made-of-stardust.html
- https://en.wikipehttps://www.science20.com/stars_planets_life/calculating_odds_life_could_begin_chancedia.org/wiki/Life
- https://www.science20.com/stars_planets_life/calculating_odds_life_could_begin_chance
- https://byjus.com/biology/cells/
- https://evolution.berkeley.edu/glossary/natural-selection/
- https://evolution.berkeley.edu/from-soup-to-cells-the-origin-of-life/how-did-life-originate/