Abstract
Essential to all contemporary life forms is an intracellular genetic apparatus capable of expressing and, upon reproduction, transmitting to the progeny information capable of undergoing evolutionary change. How this ubiquitous genetic system originated is one of the major problems in contemporary biology. The discovery of ribozymes has given considerable acceptance to the concept of an RNA world, an era in which RNA molecules are proposed to have acted as both the genetic material and the catalysts, i.e., combined genotype and phenotype in the same molecule (Gilbert, 1986).
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Nelson, K.E., Lazcano, A., Miller, S.L. (2001). Peptide Nucleic Acids as a Possible Primordial Genetic Polymer. In: Chela-Flores, J., Owen, T., Raulin, F. (eds) First Steps in the Origin of Life in the Universe. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-1017-7_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-1017-7_1
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