• Question: what is the oldest polymer?

    Asked by Fiza <3 to Thomas, Rose, Anne on 25 Jun 2015. This question was also asked by Isla, 306pmrc35.
    • Photo: Thomas Farrugia

      Thomas Farrugia answered on 25 Jun 2015:

      I’d reckon it’d have to be a natural polymer. There’s lots of hypotheses and ideas as to what was around before cells (RNA world comes to mind), so it would most likely be some very rudimentary form of protein, RNA or DNA – molecules that at some point would have evolved the ability to make more copies of themselves. These molecules would have been able to store information within them so that they could make other molecules or systems that could help them replicate further.

      It is quite awe-inspiring to think that at some point all the life around us originated from a lot of molecules bumping into one another at random.

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