The RNA World Hypothesis
If anyone is interested in further reading on this topic, or on evolution&#x2F;origin of life in general, I highly recommend &quot;The Logic of Chance&quot; by Eugene Koonin. The book pieces together the latest knowledge from all the major fields of biology (genetics&#x2F;bioinformatics, structural&#x2F;physics, etc), math, physics, and philosophy in a way I&#x27;ve never seen done before. It interrogates virtually every hypothesis of the origin of life, from all possible angles, starting mainly with what is evolution and what are the possible routes to where we are, as well as their probabilities, and critique of applying probability to these models.<p>I&#x27;m admittedly biased, because Koonin is a personal friend and occasional colleague of a member of my PhD committee, but what I&#x27;ve heard from everyone that I know who has interacted with him (unfortunately I&#x27;ve never had the opportunity, to my great dismay), is that he&#x27;s completely unassuming and carries no ego at all. My experience reading &quot;The Logic of Chance&quot; has confirmed this. The book is accessible to anyone with an ability to read. It taught me more about how to think for myself and recognize bias than probably any other work I&#x27;ve read (perhaps excluding Taleb&#x27;s &quot;Incerto&quot; series, which complement Koonin&#x27;s work very nicely), and also taught me a lot about evolution. The book can be found on the usual websites that graduate students are apt to visit.<p>The RNA world hypothesis is almost single handedly responsible for my interest in virology.