ribosomes

This paper apparently shows some decent evidence (not proof) that ribosomes are capable of being the original self-replicators.

Will anyone here be really surprised if it turns out ribosomes are duplicating machines designed by some alien race?

Common examples are ribosomes, which read the genetic code and make all our proteins from that code, and self-splicing introns.

This ignores that genetic code is meaningless without the translation machinery (ribosomes and the entire physical world of physics and chemistry).

Since ribosomes are critical machinery, but not usually considered the primogenitor, this up-ends mainstream thinking in a chicken/egg sort of way.

For example, multiple RNA strands can be processed by ribosomes at once - they are essentially reading code to produce outputs (multi-threading/processing?).

Binary would work too, assuming ribosomes and mRNA could expand the word size...

With these techniques we can now reconstruct things like ribosomes all the way down to their atomic structure [1].

I had the impression that the whole mRNA + ribosomes process is extremely complex and poorly understood.

Proto/paleo ribosomes were probably entirely RNA in the RNA world, long ago.

All the good antibiotics we have interact with complex systems like ribosomes that are made up of multiple interacting modules.

The ribosomes in turn interpret the DNA string to make proteins.

"But there’s a glaring hole in this plot: ribosomes themselves are made up of proteins" Ribosomes are made up of proteins and rRNA!

There's also the "green goo" approach, repurposing biological systems like DNA, proteins and ribosomes, eg.

I think this interesting to study the functions of the ribosomes, but the "Custom Chemicals" part is misleading.

It just what's called a "codon map" to map "codons" (3 letter sequences) to amino acids (the building blocks of proteins), just as ribosomes do in cells.

Ribosomes are productive nanosystems, that is, machines that combine small molecular building blocks under digital control to build complex structures.