How did the building blocks of life come together to spawn the first organisms? Scientists just got a major clue. In a new study published in the journal Nature, a team of biologists say they've demonstrated how RNA molecules and amino acids could combine, by purely random interactions, to form proteins — the tireless molecules that are essential for carrying out nearly all of a cell's functions.  Proteins don't replicate themselves but are created inside a complex molecular machine called a ribosome, based on instructions carried by RNA. Now we've gotten a glimpse at how proteins could form before these […]