Behold the ribosome, one of life’s hideously tangled molecular masterpieces. You couldn’t live without it, and the same goes for all living things on Earth. It might seem impossible to reconstruct the evolution of such a complex thing that emerged over 3.5 billion years ago. But according to an intriguing new hypothesis, the ribosome’s evolution may turn out to be elegantly simple. You can read about it in my latest guest post on the Origins Blog.
Originally published February 20, 2009. Copyright 2009 Carl Zimmer.