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We are all more closely related than you think. Your DNA is 99.9% similar to the person sitting next to you, 96% the same as a chimpanzee and 90% the same as a cat. The differences between species is more of a curve than it is a step (Figure 1).

Figure 1. The traditional stepped view of the tree of life.

Traditionally life has been portrayed as developing in stages. This tree illustrates how all life was once one thing (the Root) and progresses into being you and me A, B, C, D and E the most complex forms of life on the planet. But the root has always posed a conundrum.Where did it come from? Was it the chicken or the egg first?

Life is thought to have started from simple inorganic molecules which interacted to make other molecules which could replicate themselves. Imagine, the simplest thing that can replicate itself, however, every billion replications an error occurs making a new type of replicant which then over time repeats this process. Add a dash of evolution and a billion years later you get life...

This process is called abiogenesis. If you wait another 3.5 billion years, the process becomes so complex it creates multicellular organisms like us. Whilst the traditional stepped classification (see Figure.1) is useful to scientists, as it makes digestible chunks to interpret (think binary vs analogue), in the real world the process is much more fluid. Similar to the roots of a tree branching out, although many stems are produced it is still the same super organism travelling through time, as shown below.

We are all more closely related than you think, as we are simply the structures that result from our replicating material, DNA. Much the same as how html is the code that built this website.