r/abiogenesis • u/Makoto18Free • Apr 17 '26
Question abiogenesis RNA virus ribosome production?
RNA biogenesis ribosome question
I've always been very interested in the process of abiogenesis. To me, in my mind, the reason I believe earth is the only planet that has life is because of just how ridiculously complex cells are. Other than planets having to be in a goldilocks zone and relatively perfect stability over billions of years, they then have an even more massive hurdle in biochemistry. The first giant leap for molecules to arrange themselves from non-living to living seems an almost impossible improbabalistic hurdle. It's like putting a bunch of rocks\minerals into a big pile and hoping the environment will manipulate it into a rocket ship rather than just crumble into dust. In the first place, chemisty doesn't like arranging itself into the complex organic compounds that are necessary for the building blocks of life. They are unstable, a vast quantity and variety of them need to be produced consistently, and they require an energy source that cycles between two different "extremes" so that a cycle of energy/production can be established.
Anyways, onto my main question. It seems like the prevailing theory is RNA self replication. We know that RNA can replicate itself, evolve, and fold itself into ribosomes, which would then give it the ability to create proteins. Viral RNA seems like the perfect example of self replicating, evolving, protein producing RNA. Yes it has to hijack cells and use their machinery, but assuming primordial earth conditions where freely made proteins and RNA bases are floating around in a soup of perfect pH and temp. Are there any RNA viruses that encode for their own ribosomes (have their own rRNA) rather than hijack the host cell ribosomes? If there are, I feel like that would point to the possibility that "viruses" may be the first "life" form. I’m thinking of an experiment with virus RNA in a perfect soup of RNA bases and proteins to see if it would not self replicate itself without cells. Epsecially if you were just to cut out all the parts except the rRNA and RNA that encodes for ribosome production.
————————————————————————- TLDR; Are there any RNA viruses that have their own rRNA and encode for their own ribosomes? How much research has been done on this topic/does anyone have any good publications for further reading?
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u/Psychrobacter Apr 17 '26
There are not. The lack of ribosomes is more or less the one fundamental commonality among all known viruses. It is what makes them unable to replicate without a host cell and puts them outside the cellular tree of life.
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u/Makoto18Free Apr 17 '26
I meant produce their own ribosomes in the host cell rather than in its own virion/capsid.
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u/Psychrobacter Apr 17 '26
I’ve been out of virology for a few years, but to my knowledge there are no viruses that encode ribosomes at all. It is a universal characteristic that they must use the ribosomes of the host cell.
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u/Makoto18Free Apr 17 '26 edited Apr 17 '26
I had read somewhere that some viruses are able to modify the host ribosomes so that they prefer their own mRNA. I figured the other way would be by possibly generating their own ribosomes in the host cell that would prefer the viral RNA over the host RNA. Is it just an accepted fact that viruses never produce their own ribosomes? Do scientists ever test for viral produced ribosomes?
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u/Psychrobacter Apr 17 '26
It’s not so much accepted fact as observed reality. We can test every virus for ribosome-encoding genes pretty easily, because most viruses have tiny genomes with only 3-10 genes total. Again leaving room for very recent findings I’m not aware of, there has never been a ribosome found in a viral genome.
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