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How the first life on Earth survived its biggest threat — water

Living things depend on water, but it breaks down DNA and other key molecules. So how did the earliest cells deal with the water paradox?
  1. Michael Marshall

    1. Michael Marshall is a science writer based in Devon, UK, and the author of The Genesis Quest.

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True colour satellite image of Manicouagan Reservoir (also Lake Manicouagan), an annular lake in northern Quebec, Canada

Life might have begun in bodies of water on land, perhaps in craters similar to Canada’s Lake Manicouagan, formed by an ancient impact. Credit: Planet Observer/Universal Images Group/Getty

On 18 February next year, a NASA spacecraft will plummet through the Martian atmosphere, fire its retro-rockets to break its fall and then lower a six-wheeled rover named Perseverance to the surface. If all goes according to plan, the mission will land in Jezero Crater, a 45-kilometre-wide gash near the planet’s equator that might once have held a lake of liquid water.

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Nature 588, 210-213 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-03461-4

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