“Now, a pair of Scripps Research Institute scientists has taken a significant step toward answering that question. The scientists have synthesized for the first time RNA enzymes that can replicate themselves without the help of any proteins or other cellular components, and the process proceeds indefinitely.” From https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090109173205.htm
RNA alone is a good enough self replicating life form that arose first before we the rest of the cell machinery. This would be the most extreme form of the RNA world hypothesis. There is no need for anything else to evolve to claim that life has arisen.
While cool, I didn’t expect indefinite self-replication to be hard under these circumstances. The enzymes work by combining two halves of the other enzyme- i.e. they are not self-replicating using materials we would expect to ever naturally occur, they are self-replicating using bisected versions of themselves.
I’ve slightly downgraded my estimate for the minimum viable genome size for self-replicating RNA because I wasn’t thinking about complicated groups of cross-catalyzing RNA.
“Now, a pair of Scripps Research Institute scientists has taken a significant step toward answering that question. The scientists have synthesized for the first time RNA enzymes that can replicate themselves without the help of any proteins or other cellular components, and the process proceeds indefinitely.” From https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090109173205.htm
OK, but how does this evolve into a bacterium? Won’t it evolve into a local maximum of RNA enzyme replication efficiency and stay there?
RNA alone is a good enough self replicating life form that arose first before we the rest of the cell machinery. This would be the most extreme form of the RNA world hypothesis. There is no need for anything else to evolve to claim that life has arisen.
While cool, I didn’t expect indefinite self-replication to be hard under these circumstances. The enzymes work by combining two halves of the other enzyme- i.e. they are not self-replicating using materials we would expect to ever naturally occur, they are self-replicating using bisected versions of themselves.
I’ve slightly downgraded my estimate for the minimum viable genome size for self-replicating RNA because I wasn’t thinking about complicated groups of cross-catalyzing RNA.