ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that the Ribotype theory gives a secondary role to deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) only during precellular evolution. According to the ribotype theory, the ancestral ribotypes were themselves very heterogeneous systems where some ribosoids were better at carrying linear information, and others at performing three-dimensional operations in space. They had what could be called a ribogenotype and a ribophenotype, even when there was only a crude correspondence between them. The ribonucleic acid are the oldest molecules on earth because they are the very centre of the cell organization and came necessarily before the cell itself. The chapter discusses the ‘other’ face of the Ribotype theory, the complementary side that deals with the nature of the cell and the role of its basic components. From an historical point of view, the Ribotype theory of the Origins does not go beyond the Precambrian because differentiation is at present an unsurmounted obstacle.
