Every major theory of how life began on Earth has a hole in it. That is the starting point for Prof. Yongdong Jin of the School of Biomedical Engineering at Shenzhen University in China, who has put forward what he calls the “nanozymes hypothesis.”
Researchers broadly agree that the first biopolymers and their building blocks were a critical step. What they cannot say is exactly how prehistoric inert chemicals, mostly gases, turned into living systems. The full sequence cannot be observed directly and is extremely hard to recreate. Models such as the Metabolism-first world (FeS world), Zinc world, Thioester world, RNA world and Lipid world each offer something, but none gives a complete account, and no single theory ties every part of the process together.
Minerals as the engine
Jin’s proposal puts primitive natural mineral nanozymes, which he abbreviates MN-zymes, at the center. Later generations of organic small molecule hybridized nanozymes follow them. In his account, these materials mattered most in the earliest stages, helping produce the first biologically relevant molecules from nonliving substances.
The mechanism he describes is “inorganic photosynthesis.” Under primitive conditions, MN-zymes would have converted gases step by step into more complex molecules through chemical and physical processes.
He gives them five jobs: catalysis, surface binding or confinement, anti-UV irradiation, (photo-)selection and energy flow management. Using light, heat and electricity, they may also have helped turn energy into molecular information, stored in molecules that could be read, written and duplicated. Those abilities are considered essential before anything can count as alive.
Where they came from
The hypothesis treats Earth as an “all-in-one” chemistry laboratory running over immense stretches of time. Pressure and temperature gradients from mantle to crust, especially near active volcanoes and geothermal hot springs, could have supplied high temperature and high pressure lava reactions and hydrothermal reactions. Those would have yielded the earliest MN-zymes: metals and noble metals, metal oxides, and sulfide nanoparticles. Laboratories use similar approaches today to make artificial nanozymes.
Mineral nanoparticles are already everywhere. Thousands of terragrams circulate through ecosystems every year, and some have enzyme-like activity. They turn up in oceans, waters, the atmosphere and soils, where they take part in biogeochemical cycles. Studies also show that they can form spontaneously when natural minerals weather in charged water microdroplets or under UV irradiation, and sunlight and lightning may have driven production at scale.
The “Au world”
One piece of the idea stands out. Jin argues that monolayer-protected gold nanoparticles may have been among the most effective MN-zymes, and he calls this concept the “Au world.”
The catch is stability. Free gold particles generally need organic surface coatings, so they would have struggled in the original soup. Once other MN-zymes made small molecules such as thiols and amines, and those built up in certain places, the gold could have survived in protected form and joined the reaction network.
The review also takes up the water paradox, the micro-nano structure of Earth’s surface, dry-wet cycling, molecular cooperation and co-evolution, and the chiral origin of biomolecules. Jin hopes the framework helps reconcile long-standing disputes among competing theories. The work appeared in the journal Research (2025; 8).
