09 March 2010
The primordial soup that gave birth to life on Earth may have had an extra, previously unrecognised ingredient: a "molecular midwife" that played a
crucial role in allowing the first large biomolecules to assemble from their building blocks.
The earliest life forms are thought by many to have been based not on DNA but on the closely related molecule RNA, because long strands of RNA can act
as rudimentary enzymes. This would have allowed a primitive metabolism to develop before life forms made proteins for this purpose.
RNA strands are formed from building blocks called nucleotides linked together head to tail in a long chain. This happens easily if the nucleotides
can bind to another RNA strand that guides their assembly. However, the earliest RNA molecules to form, billions of years ago, would have had no
pre-existing RNA to guide them.
www.newscientist.com...
Forming a double helix prevents the RNA from going round in circles
Was our oldest ancestor a proton-powered rock?
gave birth on earth - video content
There are so many theories about where we came from, here is another, food for thought. Don't think we will know in our life time.