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In Test Tubes, RNA Molecules Evolve into a Tiny Ecosystem
- IceMetalPunk 4y agoThis is really cool, but also not at all surprising. We usually talk about evolution as a thing biological organisms do, but it's far more general than that. Any system, living or not, requires only three properties to guarantee evolution will occur: reproduction, mutation, and competition. In other words, anything that can make imperfect copies of itself will evolve as long as those imperfections change how many copies will be made in the next set. So having RNA with those properties virtually guarantees an evolutionary system as long as they don't immediately go extinct.