Researchers at UCL have discovered how two essential ingredients of life, RNA (ribonucleic acid) and amino acids, may have naturally combined about four billion years ago at the dawn of life.

Amino acids are the basic components of proteins, which act as the engines of life and drive nearly every biological function. However, proteins cannot copy themselves or generate instructions for their own production. Those instructions come from RNA, a molecule closely related to DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid).