Perspectives in 2014

Biological systems have evolved sophisticated machinery to assemble polymeric receptors capable of molecular recognition. Although such precise levels of structural control are currently inaccessible to chemists, impressive progress has been made towards the realization of wholly synthetic analogues of antibodies and other proteins. Protein structure from H. Li et al. Biochemistry 33, 11734–11744 (1994); © American Chemical Society.

RNA can carry information, self-replicate and catalyse reactions, and so is often included in scenarios for the origin of life, but was it the first self-replicator? This Perspective considers the question of whether simpler polymer structures could have encoded early life, and discusses how to seek them out.