Origin of the First Cell & Career Paths in Biomolecular Computing

[cam875]

can an educated person give me an explanation on how the first cell came to be? I mean how simple can a cell really be? and I thought of something, once a cell assembles why does it need DNA, as long as the current enzymes are not destroyed it does not need blueprints on how to create them again now does it? or am I thinking about it the wrong way, is DNA used to construct the cell initially at the beginning of its creation. Sorry for all the questions, answer what you no i just got excited and had a lot of questions lol.

also i am just wondering, I am someone who is very interested in getting into creating computer hardware out of biological molecules. I think it would be a cool job since its a new field that is still in its prelimenary stages. What would a good Bachelors degree be for getting into that? i was thinking biochemistry? any insight would be helpful. Thanks in advance.

 

[Coheda]

The simplist cell had no organelles at all, probably used some more primitive form of modern DNA, or RNA-- Some sort of Nucleic Acid-- and probably was supported by water as opposed to cytoplasm.

What probably happened was lipid structures floating around in the ocean absorbed other chemicals floating around with them, such as nucleotides, which could organize into strands-- Possibly divide, or split, which would split the structure as well.

That's probably not very accurate, though.

When a cell splits, everything is split between the two cells, so that would include those enzymes.

As for the last part, I have no idea.

 

[arildno]

Okay, MY specultion:
WAY before we had anything that could be called cells, we had molecular replicators
These MIGHT have some relation to modern RNA or DNA, but most likely not.

Once they were floating about, OTHER "parasitic" replicators would find a niche, namely to latch onto the parent replicator of a different molecular form, and replicate themselves, using the first as a template
(something like amino acid sequences latching onto RNA, now carefully regulated in the ribosomal process).

Thus, the primordial chemical soup would cluster into competing zones, within each zone a variety of replicating molecules would commonly be found together, because their co-existence was replicatively benificial to all of them.