Life has to store information and copy it. Today DNA needs proteins to copy itself, yet those proteins are encoded in DNA: a chicken-and-egg problem. The RNA world hypothesis solves it by giving RNA both jobs, since some RNA molecules can act as catalysts. In Quanta Magazine, Philip Ball shows where the idea struggles. Most mutations destroy such catalytic RNAs, and lab-made versions are hundreds of units long, while RNA chains that form by themselves reach only 10 to 15.

Then Philipp Holliger's team found a 45-unit molecule that copies another RNA strand, and two more small active RNAs among about ten trillion candidates. Self-copying may be less rare than feared. The story shows how a scientific origin account gets tested, piece by piece, without any need for a creator.

Source: Philip Ball, Quanta Magazine (2026-11-09)
https://www.quantamagazine.org/did-life-begin-in-an-rna-world-20261109/

Summarised by the FTI newsdesk.