The larger catalogue for the whole series is on the parent page, the origin of life: the literature.
Sources cited
| Source | What it is | Access | Direction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bokov & Steinberg 2009, Nature 457:977 | The A-minor accretion model of the large subunit. The load-bearing concession of this article. | Closed access, not opened. Abstract from PubMed; the method is described from three papers that were opened | undercuts |
| Fox 2010, CSH Perspect Biol 2:a003483 | The clearest description of the A-minor timing method. | Opened in full | undercuts |
| Petrov et al. 2015, PNAS 112:15396 | An independent accretion model, and a verbatim restatement of the Bokov and Steinberg logic. | Opened in full | undercuts |
| Caetano-Anollés 2015, J Mol Evol 80:162 | The published objection: an incorrect insertion assignment, and the ribosome growing from the decoding end instead. | Opened | complicates |
| Koonin 2014, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek 106:27 | "the ominous specter of irreducible complexity," with the qualifying sentence that follows it. | Full text from Europe PMC XML | supports, with the qualifier |
| Bose et al. 2022, Nucleic Acids Res 50:1815 | Yonath's laboratory builds the proto-ribosome; it forms peptide bonds and cannot translocate. | Opened in full (CC BY-NC) | undercuts, then limits |
| Agmon 2024, IJMS 25:4960 | Three groups have now built protoribosome analogues that fold, dimerise and catalyse. | Opened in full (CC BY) | undercuts |
| Xiao, Murakami, Suga & Ferré-D'Amaré 2008, Nature 454:358 | The flexizyme: 45 nucleotides, >105 rate enhancement, >104-fold discrimination, exclusive 3′-OH acylation. | Abstract verbatim from Europe PMC | undercuts |
| Radakovic, Todisco, Mishra & Szostak 2025 | An autocatalytic aminoacyl-RNA synthetase ribozyme that sustains itself over indefinite serial dilution. | Opened in full (CC BY) | undercuts |
| Li, Weinreb, Francklyn & Carter 2013, JBC 288:26856 | Synthetase urzymes: 106-fold acceleration at 61% of modern catalytic proficiency, with 15-25% of the mass. | Opened in full | complicates |
| Martinez-Rodriguez et al. 2015, JBC 290:19710 | Both synthetase classes encoded on opposite strands of one designed gene, both products active. | Opened in full (CC BY) | complicates |
| Carter & Wills 2018, Mol Biol Evol 35:269 | "Bootstrapping of increasingly detailed coding is thus intrinsic to polypeptide aaRS, but impossible in an RNA world." | Opened in full (CC BY-NC) | complicates |
| Goldman, Fournier & Kaçar 2026, Cell Genomics 6:101140 | Pre-LUCA synthetase ancestors lacking tryptophan and unable to discriminate leucine, isoleucine and valine. Post-cutoff. | Opened | complicates |
| Lynch & Ellington 2026, PNAS Nexus 5:pgag019 | "the most enigmatic" unsolved problem; the fidelity gap in numbers; the parasite hypothesis, offered as testable. Post-cutoff. | Opened in full (CC BY-NC) | supports, with the authors' own qualifications |
Considered and not used
- Bokov & Steinberg 2009 body. Closed at Nature, and confirmed closed by Semantic Scholar and OpenAlex. Only the abstract was read. This is the largest access gap in the article, since the paper is the concession the whole first section rests on.
- Petrov et al. 2014, PNAS 111:10251. Not opened. The "in essential agreement" sentence this project's dossier attributed to the 2015 paper may belong here; the article does not quote it.
- Illangasekare et al. 1995, Science 267:643, the first tRNA-charging ribozyme. Not opened; the flexizyme results supersede it for this argument and the 1995 date is stated without a quotation.
- Murakami, Ohta, Ashigai & Suga 2006, which introduced the flexizyme system. Named inside the flexizyme footnote; the 2008 structural paper is the one quoted.
- Hsiao et al. 2009, "Peeling the onion," the independent accretion model. Not opened; described as convergent evidence rather than quoted.
- Yamanouchi, Moriya & Yokobori 2026, on resurrected LUCA transfer RNAs. Handled in the genetic code article.
- Agmon's proto-tRNA self-aminoacylation proposal. Experiments proposed, not performed; nothing to cite yet.
- The aptamer-selection literature on RNA binding sites statistically enriched in their ligand's codons. Described in one clause; the individual papers were not opened, and the article makes no numerical claim from them.
Open questions
- Somebody should obtain Bokov & Steinberg 2009. The article concedes its result on the strength of three secondary descriptions.
- Whether Caetano-Anollés' objection has been answered in print by the Williams or Yonath groups. No reply was found.
- Whether any published system charges a set of transfer RNAs according to a rule, rather than charging promiscuously. This is the single question that would change the article's verdict, and a search found nothing.
- The Petrov attribution error should be traced. If the "essential agreement" sentence is in Petrov 2014, the dossier's citation needs correcting rather than deleting.