The finding adds weight to the "RNA World" hypothesis, which proposes that life on Earth evolved from early forms of RNA. "Mike Yarus has been one of the strongest proponents of this idea, and his lab has provided some of the strongest evidence for it over the past two decades," Blumenthal said.
Yarus noted that the RNA World hypothesis was complicated by the fact that RNA molecules are hard to make. "This work shows that RNA enzymes could have been far smaller, and therefore far easier to make under primitive conditions, than anyone has expected."
If very simple RNA molecules such as the product of the Yarus lab could have accelerated chemical reactions in Earth's primordial stew, the chances are much greater that RNA could direct and accelerate biochemical reactions under primitive conditions.
"If there exists that kind of mini-catalyst, a 'sister' to the one we describe, the world of the replicators would also jump a long step closer and we could really feel we were closing in on the first things on Earth that could undergo Darwinian evolution," Yarus said.
"In other words, we may have taken a substantial step toward the very origin of Earthly life," he said. "However, keep well in mind that the tiny replicator has not been found, and that its existence will be decided by experiments not yet done, perhaps not yet imagined."
Simple RNA molecules can catalyze protein synthesis. Therefore, "we may have taken a substantial step toward the very origin of Earthly life".
"The tiny replicator has not yet been found".
Really? The missing 'tiny replicator' is insignificant in light of a gaping hole in the 'RNA World' theory and the 'breakthrough' ignores the underlying problem as well. The theory is just one of many "naturalistic mechanisms of life" fallacies.
What becomes obvious is that evolutionists are really exercising their imaginations rather than engaging in real research as they come up with their origin-of-life theories. In fact, a million-dollar 'The Origin of Life Prize' is being offered "for proposing a highly plausible mechanism for the spontaneous rise of genetic instructions in nature sufficient to give rise to life."
In order for evolution to have something to tinker with, the first life-form would have had to have been astoundingly complex, not super simple.
An additional problem that is faced is the need for energy for the interactions to take place, a so-called "driver reaction." The formation of energy (in the form of ATP) in the cell is no simple process. It requires many complex molecules all interacting with one another in a stepwise fashion to produce the energy needed for life. "The chances that blind, undirected, inanimate chemistry would go out of its way in multiple steps and use of reagents in just the right sequence to form RNA is highly unlikely," argues Robert Shapiro. Instead, he advocates the metabolism-first argument: that early self-sustaining autocatalytic chemosynthetic systems associated with amino acids predated RNA.
