One of humanity’s most enduring questions is also one of its biggest: how did life begin? Long before DNA, genes, or cells as we know them existed, how did life emerge from non-living chemical systems?  One possible explanation  lies in simple chemistry, which has the capacity to evolve and become more complex.  In a new study at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery (WID), Tymofii Sokolskyi, a PhD candidate in Astrobiology & Evolution working in the David Baum Lab and the Department of Botany, takes a fresh look at that question.