While many questions on the biochemical mechanisms of how piezophilic, i.e., pressure-loving, organisms resist pressure remain open, some theories locate the origin of life to deep-sea hydrothermal vents, where early life forms would have been shielded from the harmful radiation of the young sun. An early MD study investigated the compressibility and hydration energy of a protein in solution at a pressure of 10 kbar. While this study did not detect any signs of denaturation during the time scale of the simulation, a mixed experimental/MD study revealed structural changes of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) protease dimer under high pressure. Song et al. studied the time-dependent elastic properties of cellulose and found that the compressibility, Young's modulus and Poisson's ratio change in response to different deformation rates. A competing theory attributes the origin of life to high-velocity impacts of astronomical bodies, and MD simulations can provide useful data to supportor contradictthis conjecture. Goldman et al., e.g., applied the ab initio MD based multiscale shock compression simulation technique (MSST) to investigate impact-induced shock compression of cometary ice. Cometary ice is primarily composed of water, however, it also contains other molecules such as CO 2 , NH 3 and CH 3 OH. The results indicate that glycine-containing complexes begin to form after a series of chemical reactions between H + ions and transient C-N bonded oligomers, which may have occurred during comet impact events. Modern computational tools allow the simulation of high-pressure structural, electronic and spectroscopic properties of chemical systems of any size and complexity, ranging from single atoms to bulk materials. Pressure-induced crystal structure changes can be predicted, chemical reactions simulated and bonding situations understood. Hence, as in virtually every other branch of chemistry and materials science, computational methods have become invaluable tools that not only complement experiments, but in many cases deliver insights that cannot be derived experimentally. The ability to screen a large variety of chemical systems and pressure-induced transformations computationally allows to extract general principles of high-pressure chemistry without the need to conduct individual, time-consuming experiments.