Includes bibliographical references and index.

Foreword to the first edition of The RNA world / Francis Crick -- Prologue to the first edition of The RNA world / James D. Watson -- The RNA worlds in context / Thomas R. Cech -- Setting the stage: the history, chemistry, and geobiology behind RNA / Steven A. Benner, Hyo-Joong Kim, Zunyi Yang -- The origins of the RNA world / Michael P. Robertson, Gerald F. Joyce -- Getting past the RNA world: the initial Darwinian ancestor / Michael Yarus -- The origins of cellular life / Jason P. Schrum, Ting F. Zhu, Jack W. Szostak -- Riboswitches and the RNA world / Ronald R. Breaker -- Riboswitches: structures and mechanisms / Andrew D. Garst, Andrea L. Edwards, Robert T. Batey -- Small self-cleaving ribozymes / Adrian R. Ferré-D'Amaré, William G. Scott -- Group II introns: mobile ribozymes that invade DNA / Alan M. Lambowitz, Steven Zimmerly -- The roles of RNA in the synthesis of protein / Peter B. Moore, Thomas A. Steitz -- Evolution of protein synthesis from an RNA world / Harry F. Noller -- the ribosome: some hard facts about its structure and hot air about its evolution / V. Ramakrishnan -- Noncoding RNPs of viral origin / Joan Steitz ... [et al.] -- Spliceosome structure and function / Cindy L. Will, Reinhard Lührmann -- Telomerase: an RNP enzyme synthesizes DNA / Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Kathleen Collins -- Bacterial small RNA regulators: versatile roles and rapidly evolving variations / Susan Gottesman, Gisela Storz -- RNA in defense: CRISPRs protect prokaryotes against mobile genetic elements / Matthijs M. Jore, Stan J.J. Brouns, John van der Oost -- Ancestral roles of small RNAs: an ago-centric perspective / Leemor Joshua-Tor, Gregory J. Hannon -- RNA interference and heterochromatin assembly / Tom Volpe, Robert A. Martienssen -- The X as model for RNA's niche in epigenomic regulation / Jeannie T. Lee -- The long arm of long noncoding RNAs: roles as sensors regulating gene transcriptional programs / Xiangting Wang ... [et al.] -- Folding and finding RNA secondary structure / David H. Mathews, Walter N. Moss, Douglas H. Turner -- Predicting and modeling RNA architecture / Eric Westhof, Benoît Masquida, Fabrice Jossinet -- RNA reactions one molecule at a time / Ignacio Tinoco, Gang Chen, Xiaohui Qu -- Aptamers and the RNA world, pat and present / Larry Gold ... [et al.] -- In vivo RNAi: today and tomorrow / Norbert Perrimon, Jian-Quan Ni, Lizabeth Perkins.