If you thought life evolved in bubbling hot springs, think again. Pieces of RNA have been made that can copy RNA strands longer than themselves, supporting the idea that the first life was based on self-replicating RNA, not DNA. What’s more, they work best in the cold, hinting that life began on ice.
But no known RNA enzyme can copy a stretch of RNA as long as itself, without which RNA organisms couldn’t have survived for long.
To find such an enzyme, Philipp Holliger of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, has been creating libraries of RNA sequences and screening them for the ability to copy other RNA.
Their latest creation goes a step further. “It makes RNA big enough to encode itself,” says Holliger.
Read the full, original story here: Earth’s first life may have sprung up in ice
