The origin of life

What distinguishes life organisms from others is their ability to reproduce themselves and evolve in the process. At the heart of all know living organisms lies the encoding of proteins into DNA. Cells make a negative copy of DNA sequences into RNA which is then read by ribosomes to make proteins. DNA can also be cloned during cell duplication.

All these processes involve several complex macromolecules made out of mostly proteins and RNA and it is difficult to believe that they formed spontaneously. Yet, there is no know organism exhibiting a simple mechanism from which the one we know might have evolved. E. Banwell, A. Taormina, J. Heddle and myself have proposed a mechanism by which a small subset of RNA and proteins might have evolved into selecting spontaneously proteins and RNA involved in the transcription mechanism hence kick starting the fundamental process of life itself. [Molecular Biology and Evolution 35 (2018) 404-416 doi: 10.1093/molbev/msx292]