They retraced the origin of enzymes during life’s earliest divergence into bacteria and archaea, and found evidence for two independent origins of life for free-living cells. Experts when it comes to networks, they devised a new method to order metabolic reactions from the simplest to the most complex, possibly recapitulating the order in which metabolic reactions arose at origins. It is part of our human condition to want to know about our origins, where we come from, where life started and how the first cells on Earth made a living. Let’s call it by name: we are looking at one origin of the genetic code, but two origins of life.” The prokaryotes comprise the two primordial lineages of life: Bacteria and Archaea.