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]