Gerald Joyce and colleagues at the Scripps Research Institute have shown that a group of synthetic RNA enzymes reproduced themselves much as living organisms, but without life or cells.

“So long as you provide the building blocks and the starter seed, it goes forever,” wrote Joyce in the journal Science.

One theory of how life originated says that it began using RNA to store information, like DNA does now.

The new chemical reproduction may shed light on one step in how early living systems emerged on a lifeless world.

The researchers say their hacked enzymes have a 30-bit capacity to carry information for replication, and have shown the ability to evolve by a process similar to natural selection.

Once added to a soup of building blocks, strings of the nucleic bases “went critical” and produced more RNA enzymes than Joyce and his team put in.

While most bred true at first, some mutated and eventually became the dominant forms of replication, driving the original RNA into extinction.

Graphic: Earthweek