article_snippet.sent: RNA, is a molecule made up of one or more nucleotides.
article_snippet.sent: The main job of RNA is to transfer the genetic code to create proteins from the nucleus to the ribosome.
article_snippet.sent: The study, by the University of Milan and University of Colorado Boulder, is based on a discovery in the 1980s that RNA can chemically alter its own structure.
article_snippet.sent: RNA is similar to DNA, and carries out a number of jobs in our cells, including acting as an on-and-off switch for some genes.
article_snippet.sent: Scientists believe that when life was in RNA early stages, RNA played a leading role in creating complex organisms before DNA and proteins were developed.
article_snippet.sent: Many origin-of-life researchers say that RNA chains are too specialised to have been created as a product of random chemical reactions.
article_snippet.sent: In the pre-RNA world, the spontaneous self-assembly of fragments of nucleic acids – the building block of life - may have acted as a template for the spontaneous self-assembly of fragments of nucleic acids chemical self-assembly. '
article_snippet.sent: The new findings show that in the presence of appropriate chemical conditions, the spontaneous self-assembly of small DNA fragments into stacks of short duplexes greatly favours the spontaneous self-assembly of small DNA fragments into stacks of short duplexes binding into longer polymers, thereby providing a pre-RNA route to the pre-RNA world,' added Professor Clark.
highlights_snippet.sent: This self-assembly capability has been shown to take place in RNA .