The Role of Sunlight and Energy in Early Life Formation

Sunlight plays a critical role in early life formation by facilitating photochemical reactions needed to create nucleotides, amino acids, and lipids from cyanide compounds. However, the challenge lies in transforming sunlight energy into a useful chemical form to drive the condensation of these building blocks into long RNA chains. While the pathway to creating two of the four building blocks of RNA is mostly understood, the conversion of solar energy into a usable chemical energy source remains a major unsolved mystery in early life formation.