this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2025
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Science

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Scientists Re-Create the Microbial Dance That Sparked Complex Life (www.quantamagazine.org)
submitted 2 weeks ago by Powderhorn to c/science
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[–] Gaywallet 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Framing it as what 'sparked complex life' is what makes it slightly clickbait-y. The circumstances which involved the creation of RNA/DNA is arguably more important when we talk about what 'sparked complex life', but it's really borderline and this is an important discovery and previous gap in knowledge so I think it's excusable here.

[–] Primer81@lemmy.zip 5 points 2 weeks ago

Can life as we know it exist without DNA/RNA? I believe even the simplest forms of life have it. If by complex life they mean multicellular organisms then I think it seems pretty accurate.

[–] Powderhorn 2 points 2 weeks ago

What's exciting here is this is a door opening into empirically exploring what sparked complex life. It could be bacteria insinuating themselves into cells and unintentionally ending up in a symbiotic relationship, or not, or a combination of evolutionary factors. This is nonetheless new data we didn't have, and I'm always for that. Maybe it'll be ruled out, or maybe it'll create a new realm of science.

So often today, it feels like we've hit the end of science, and I'd argue that what we need to move forward are new data and forms of measurement. This feels like that.