Two prominent origin-of-life chemists have published a new hypothesis for how the first sugars — which were necessary for life to evolve — arose on the early Earth. In a paper in the journal Chem, chemists from Scripps Research and the Georgia Institute of Technology propose that key sugars needed for making early life forms could have emerged from reactions involving glyoxylate (C2HO3–), a relatively simple chemical that plausibly existed on the Earth before life evolved. Charles Liotta, Regents' Professor Emeritus in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, is one of the study's authors. (This study was also covered in Astrobiology and Mirage News.)