I have a healthy interest in genetics, but I'm failing to see how having ribosomes begin as independent entities "upends" (to quote the current title) anything about evolutionary theory as a whole.
Even allowing for hype, can someone give this some clarity?
There is a long term question in abiogenesis that is quite similar to "what came first, the chicken or the egg?" -- what was the first self-replicating entity?
Modern cells are vastly complex; self-replication must have started with something orders of magnitude more simple.
Some of the components that appear essential are, on the other hand, too simple to self-replicate, such as DNA.
A popular notion alluded to elsewhere on this page is the "RNA world", that RNA, not DNA, is where it all started, but the arguments along those lines have truly major gaps in what the original machinery would have been.
This paper apparently shows some decent evidence (not proof) that ribosomes are capable of being the original self-replicators.
Since ribosomes are critical machinery, but not usually considered the primogenitor, this up-ends mainstream thinking in a chicken/egg sort of way.
Edit: here's the key part of the article regarding that:
> Under this radically new view of the origin of life, genes only became independent of ribosomes because ribosomes began using them to gain an advantage over their rivals—while traditional theory says that ribosomes were only created and refined because they gave genes a more efficient way of affecting their surroundings and outcompeting their rivals.
Skimming this, it doesn't appear to argue for any upending, just a "missing link" role (which, granted, would be a great discovery if it's supported, but doesn't upend anything).
Even allowing for hype, can someone give this some clarity?