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Concept

RNA world

A neuron-like structure with multiple branches and floating particles against a gradient background represents the concept of the RNA world hypothesis, suggesting early life on Earth used RNA as both genetic material and catalyst.

A hypothesis, first sketched in the 1960s by Carl Woese, Leslie Orgel, and Francis Crick and named by Walter Gilbert in 1986, that early life on Earth used RNA as both genetic material and catalyst, before DNA and proteins divided the labour between them. Supported by the discovery of ribozymes — catalytic RNAs — and by the central role of RNA in the modern ribosome. The chemistry of how the first ribozyme assembled itself remains unsolved.

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