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  • NEWS FEATURE

How did life begin? One key ingredient is coming into view

A Nobel-prizewinning scientist’s team has taken a big step forward in its quest to reconstruct an early-Earth RNA capable of building proteins.
  1. Amber Dance

    1. Amber Dance is a freelance science journalist in the Los Angeles area.

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Model of chopsticks pulling early-Earth ribosomal RNA from a bowl of ramen.

Illustration by Hudson Christie

Billions of years ago, before there were beasts, bacteria or any living organism, there were RNAs. These molecules were probably swirling around with amino acids and other rudimentary biomolecules, merging and diverging, on an otherwise lifeless crucible of a planet.

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Nature 615, 22-25 (2023)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00574-4

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