Thank you so much for sharing your theory in more detail! What you suggest is in the same "ballpark" that Rocha is investigating. If you want to read up on his work:Syntactic Autonomy: Or Why There is no Autonomy Without Symbols and how Self-Organizing Systems Systems Might Evolve Them
The idea that life may have originated from pure RNA world has been around for a while47, 48. In this scenario the first life forms relied on RNA molecules as both symbolic carriers of genetic information, and functional, catalytic molecules. The neutralist hypothesis for the function of RNA editing assumes such a RNA world origin of life. It posits that RNA editing could offer a process by which the dual role of RNA molecules as information carriers and catalysts could more easily co-exist. The key problem for the RNA world origin of life hypothesis is precisely the separation between these two functions of RNA. On the one hand RNA molecules should be stable (non-reactive) to carry information, and on the other hand they should be reactive to perform their catalytic function. RNA editing, could be seen as means to fragment genetic information into several non-reactive molecules, that are later, through RNA editing processes, integrated into reactive molecules46. This way, the understanding of this process of mediation between the role of RNA molecules as information carriers and catalytic molecules based on RNA editing, can also offer many clues to the problem of origin of a semiotic code from s dynamic (catalytic) substrate. Given many random distributions of the reactivity of a RNA sequence space, we could study how easily can reactive sequences be constructed from RNA edition of non-reactive molecules. A study of this process is forthcoming.
You are welcome to your opinion, donh; I'm glad you have one - it shows you care. I don't know whether Rocha's mechanism will bear up under experimentation, but if it does, it'll nicely fit with my hypothesis that algorithm at inception is proof of intelligent design because whereas it is a proposed mechanism for abiogeneis, the mechanism itself is akin to a finite state machine and thus may tilt to the manifestation of an algorithmic step-by-step instruction. And that's my opinion, which I am also welcome to!
the first life forms relied on RNA molecules as both symbolic carriers of genetic information, and functional, catalytic molecules. The neutralist hypothesis for the function of RNA editing assumes such a RNA world origin of life. It posits that RNA editing could offer a process by which the dual role of RNA molecules as information You can't call it genetic information if you don't have any genes. In my opinion, RNA is also too complicated to be the initial genesis of life. The first "signaling" across a barrier, as I have suggested, could have simply been differentials in tension between bubbles. Lipids, I therefore suggest, preceeded RNA.
I do think Rocha is on the mark, however, in pointing out that it is very key that some RNA is stable, and some is not. Notibly, mRNA is not stable. For lipid world, (which, I've posited, started into the signaling busines by passing long-chain hydrophobic/philics to understocked neighboring bubbles) stability of signal would be a death sentence. If you want to regulate chemical production in a feedback loop, you cannot send a signal to the factory floor that endures forever.