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Early RNA may have used isolation strategy to defeat useless mutants

Aerosol droplets might have allowed life’s first information molecules to outlive faster replicators

bubbles

TINY BUBBLES  Cooking up Earth’s first life probably required many “pots.” Spatial segregation into different pools or separate droplets might have helped the first self-replicating molecules survive. Later, protocells like those shown here provided more stable compartmentalization.

Richard Bizley/Science Source

By Laurel Hamers

- More than 2 years ago

Long before modern cells were around to house genetic material, tiny water droplets might have protected the first self-replicating molecules from parasitic mutants.