Self-Assembling Molecules Offer New Clues on Life's Possible Origin

[pocaracas]

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/20...ffer-.html

A pair of RNA-like molecules can spontaneously assemble into gene-length chains, chemists in the United States and Spain report. Billions of years ago, related molecules may have created a rudimentary form of genetic information that eventually led to the evolution of RNA and life itself, the researchers say.
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"The nice thing [about the current study] is this is a demonstration of self-assembly in water," says Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy, an origin of life chemist at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California. "That is a step in the right direction."

The next step, Hud says, will be to see whether this two-component assembly can be made to encode information like a primitive gene and to evolve toward the structure of RNA. If so, that still won't settle the debate as to whether CA and TAPAS gave life its start. But it will suggest one plausible chemical route to life's origin.