Scientists propose nanozymes may have helped trigger the origin of life on Earth
A new hypothesis from researchers in China is offering a different way to think about one of science’s longest running questions: how life first emerged on Earth.
Led by Prof. Yongdong Jin at Shenzhen University, the study focuses on mineral nanoparticles with enzyme-like properties, known as mineral nanozymes. These naturally occurring structures are proposed as chemical drivers that may have helped bridge the gap between simple inorganic chemistry and the first complex biological systems.
The hypothesis suggests early Earth was not a single environment but a connected system spanning oceans, atmosphere, soils, and deep geological regions, including mantle-to-crust heat flows. Across these settings, continuous energy from heat, sunlight, pressure, and electrical activity may have supported long-term chemical evolution.
Existing origin-of-life models, including RNA world, lipid world, and metabolism-first theories, each explain parts of the process. However, none fully accounts for how non-living chemistry became self-organising life in a single unified pathway.
In this framework, mineral nanozymes may have acted as multi-functional catalysts. They could accelerate reactions, concentrate molecules on surfaces, shield compounds from ultraviolet radiation, and regulate early energy transfer processes. Together, these functions may have supported the gradual formation of more complex molecular systems.
A key mechanism proposed in the study is “inorganic photosynthesis”, where mineral surfaces convert energy from sunlight, heat, and electrical discharges into chemical transformations.
The research also highlights natural formation pathways for these minerals, including weathering in charged water microdroplets, ultraviolet irradiation, and lightning-driven reactions. These processes may have produced metal-based nanoparticles such as oxides, sulfides, and noble metals across early Earth environments.
Once formed, these systems could have evolved over time, interacting with emerging organic molecules and contributing to the shift from chemistry to biology.
An estimated thousands of teragrams (1 Tg = 10¹² g) of mineral nanoparticles still circulate through Earth’s oceans, atmosphere, and soils today, some showing enzyme-like behaviour consistent with ancient processes.
The study also explores gold nanoparticles within an “Au world” framework, where stabilised particles may have contributed to early catalytic networks under prebiotic conditions.
Rather than replacing existing theories, the nanozymes hypothesis attempts to connect them through a broader view of mineral-driven chemical evolution shaped by long-term environmental cycling.
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