In Test Tubes, RNA Molecules Evolve Into a Tiny Ecosystem

After a lengthy experiment with tantalizing implications for origin-of-life studies, a research group in Japan has reported creating a test tube world of molecules that spontaneously evolved both complexity and, surprisingly, cooperation. Over hundreds of hours of replication, a single type of RNA evolved into five different molecular “species” or lineages of hosts and parasites that coexisted in…

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