To cook up life, just add citrate

Theory that RNA spawned first organisms gets boost from common compound

A common biochemical may help forge a missing link in a popular but unproven theory about how life got started.

One of the leading ideas of how loose molecules evolved to become complex cells begins with the hereditary molecule ribonucleic acid. Modern cells use RNA to make proteins, the workhorses of cellular function, but RNA likely preceded both proteins and DNA.