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	Podcast:		25. Early Earth and Life Processes
	Episode:		Early Natural Selection
	Category:		Science & Medicine
	Duration:		00:01:06
	Publish Date:		2011-07-28 08:52:13
	Description:		Transcript: The construction of larger organic molecules from smaller pieces, even if there’s a mechanism for it to operate, is essentially a random process and not directed in any way. So how did this process continue to build larger and larger chain molecules? RNA strands can catalyze their own creation, and this leads to a microscopic version of natural selection. The RNA strands that replicated faster and more efficiently and with fewer copying errors were able to dominate the biochemical soup. So RNA adapts to its environment and grows because those successful strands at copying and building will survive and dominate in the population. DNA is more versatile and less prone to copying errors then RNA, so the natural transition from RNA to DNA, which may have taken a hundred million years or more, is also a logical progression based on the same principle.
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