Researchers find that the amino acid arginine may have played a more important role in the chemical origins of life
(PHYSorg.com Chemistry)

Life as we know it originated roughly 3.5 to 4 billion years ago in the form of a prebiotic (`before life`) soup of organic molecules that somehow began to replicate themselves and pass along a genetic formula. Or so goes the thinking behind the RNA World, one of the most robust hypotheses of the origin of life.