658401 external_news 1653068548 1653068548 Chemists say they have solved a crucial problem in a theory of life’s beginnings, by demonstrating that RNA molecules can link short chains of amino acids together. The findings, published in Nature, support a variation on the ‘RNA world’ hypothesis, which proposes that before the evolution of DNA and the proteins it encodes, the first organisms were based on strands of RNA, a molecule that can both store genetic information — as sequences of the nucleosides A, C, G and U — and act as a catalyst for chemical reactions. “If the origins of RNA and the origins of protein are linked, and their emergence is not independent, then the math shifts radically in favor of an RNA–protein world and away from an RNA world,” says Loren Williams, professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry who was not involved in the study. 

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