Recent work on the "RNA world" model https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2321592121 From the abstract, "This study demonstrates the critical importance of replication fidelity for maintaining heritable information in an RNA-based evolving system, such as is thought to have existed during the early history of life on Earth." https://phys.org/news/2024-03-life-evidence-rna-world.html from the article "The study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), unveils an RNA enzyme that can make accurate copies of other functional RNA strands, while also allowing new variants of the molecule to emerge over time. These remarkable capabilities suggest the earliest forms of evolution may have occurred on a molecular scale in RNA."
No idea! We studied RNA world along with a few other ideas at uni but I absolutely do not remember that. I will feedback ExChem
Okay. So they've finally got an RNA strand that does maintain a critical threshold of replication accuracy, but still also permits some novelties or mutations to arise that are minimal enough to not eventually destroy RNA function. _
Yes, that is what the study is showing. Hopefully the team and other teams will repeat this work, tweak and make extensions of it. Exciting stuff.
