Theoretical origin of life; another rather wooly take (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, April 28, 2015, 02:02 (3279 days ago) @ David Turell

that life may have used fewer amino acids in the beginning (less than the 20 now present) has been around for a long time, but the suppositions here are actually dismissed in the article itself:-"How the code came into being presents a chicken-and-egg problem. The key players in the code — DNA, RNA, amino acids, and proteins — are chemically complicated structures that work together to make proteins. But in modern cells, proteins are used to make the components of the code. So how did a highly structured code emerge?-"Most researchers believe that the code began simply with basic proteins made from a limited alphabet of amino acids. It then grew in complexity over time, as these proteins learned to make more sophisticated molecules. Eventually, it developed into a code capable of creating all the diversity we see today. “It's long been hypothesized that life's ‘standard alphabet' of 20 amino acids evolved from a simpler, earlier alphabet, much as the English alphabet has accumulated extra letters over its history,” said Stephen Freeland, a biologist at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County."-De novo proteins that evolve are discussed!- https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150416-how-structure-evolved-in-the-primordial-soup/