anything new on "RNA backup genome"?

Yes! See the above posting under the forum "first form of life?" Also postings on previous forums on page 2 and 3 describing the RNA World and the pre-RNA World.
 
Pseudomonas are classified as proto-bacteria (before bacteria - single celled organism)

Then there are RNA-viruses.

But nanobacteria or nanoparticles seem to be the current dividing line between life and non-life. They are single cell microorganisms with a diameter below the accepted lower limit (about 200 nanometres) to be consided as bacteria. And it is under current debate whether or not they should be considered as living organisms.

But ribozyme activity is what is considered to be at the heart of the RNA-world. They can catalyze aminotransferase for energy and synthesize their own cleavage replication and translate RNA into proteins - necessary for the production of a DNA organism.
 
The article posted above refers to something similar to what we call "collective consciousness" in humans, or more accurately, genetically speaking, the holding on of ancestrial genetic traits that we no longer have, but yet that can still reappear later - like dolphins and whales re-evolving fins even though they lost them 50 million years earlier when they walked on land as tetrapods:

"molecular studies indicated that the plants harbored molecular "memories" of versions of their genetic code going back at least four generations - versions that the plant can somehow use as templates to correct the spelling of mutated stretches of DNA....evidence suggests they are pieces of RNA."
 
Bumping it a bit.

Does anyone has heard anything more solid than that bout the RNA backup?

What Valich is saying sounds a bit too speculative, and too strong, like a strenghtening of the idea that came to explain what happened with that plant, but without further research on the actual mechanisms of hypotethical RNA backup.
 
Actually there is not much about it available. There are some discussion but no new original research papers that I am aware of. Probably takes some more time.

BTW, most of the time you can safely ignore Valich's comments. I could for instance point out that pseudomonas is a (gamma-)proteobacterium and not a proto-bacterium. Funnily Valich was able to construct a whole new theory just by mistyping that bacterial group. OK I shut up now.
 
Danniel said:
Does anyone has heard anything more solid than that bout the RNA backup?
Click to expand...
I thought that research was absolutely fascinating when it was published. However, I have since seen no similar reports for any other organism. I’m not even sure if it’s been repeated and verified by other plant biologists. So, at the moment, the most that can be said is that it is a mechanism peculiar to <I>Arabidopsis thaliana</I> despite the fact that this “RNA backup” idea is being prompted as some sort of new fundamental genetic process in mass-media science fluff pieces like the one posted above. It will be interesting to see what happens to this idea........<P>
 
Well, at this point it is still more of a suggestion than anything else (and was mostly published as such). But then it was only march last year. I do not think that too many groups are jumping on that, especially because mere repetition would be tedious and probably does not lead to new insights and identifying similar loci in other organisms would rely a lot on chance. Furthermore there are one or two comments out there (I think one of them also in Nature) that suggest another (non-RNA-cache) mechanism to explain the observations by Lolle et al.
But yes, if there is on follow-up in another year or so it looks pretty bad for this theory.
 
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