Instead of trying to find the precursor to the TCA cycle by swapping in simpler versions of its components, they started by asking what versatile reactants might have been present in the prebiotic world and then looked at how much they could do under various circumstances. Astonishingly, they found that the glyoxylate and pyruvate reacted to make a range of compounds that included chemical analogues to all the intermediary products in the TCA cycle except for citric acid. Comparatively, the chemistry we discovered here was a dream to run: All you really needed to do to get the pathway started was to drop 2 stable reactants into buffered water and stick it on a warm hotplate. The chemistry was extremely robust.

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