"Blockchain Simulations Decode 4 Billion Reactions of Early Life"

A team of chemists has repurposed blockchain technology to generate the largest network of chemical reactions, termed NOEL, which may have given rise to prebiotic molecules on early Earth. This work suggests that primitive forms of metabolism might have emerged without the involvement of enzymes and demonstrates the potential of using blockchain to solve complex computational chemistry problems. The resulting network contains 4.9 billion plausible reactions, including parts of well-known metabolic pathways, but only a few hundred reactions could be called "self-replicating," indicating that self-replication may have appeared later in evolution. The use of blockchain technology significantly reduced the time and cost required for this extensive computational chemistry task.