Abstract:The spontaneous emergence of function from diverse RNA sequence pools is widely considered an important transition in the origin of life. Here we show that diverse sequence pools are not a prerequisite for the emergence of function. Starting five independent selection experiments each from a single RNA seed sequence ‐ comprising a central homopolymeric poly‐A (or poly‐U) segment flanked by different conserved primer binding sites ‐ we observe transformation (continuous drift) of the seeds into low diversity se… Show more
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