Tiny 45-base ribozyme copies itself, nudging origin-of-life theories
Researchers identified QT-45, a 45-base RNA ribozyme that can act like a tiny polymerase to copy RNA strands and, crucially, can synthesize a copy of its own sequence by base-pairing with a template. In tests, QT-45 copied various RNAs with about 95% fidelity (roughly 2–3 errors per copy), though the process is slow. This demonstrates self-replicating RNA is plausible at very small sizes and could be refined by evolution under prebiotic conditions.