The Origin of Life on Earth: A Paradigm Shift

In the course of evolution, this replication could have improved and at some point yielded more complex life. “The RNA world idea has the big advantage that it sketches out a pathway whereby complex biomolecules such as nucleic acids with optimized catalytic and, at the same time, information-coding properties can emerge,” says Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) chemist Thomas Carell. Genetic material, as we understand it today, is made up of double strands of DNA, a slightly modified, durable form of macromolecule composed of nucleotides.