Question

How did the discovery of ribozymes assist in creating a plausible model for the prebiotic origin of life?

Answer 1

Ribozymes are biochemically too complex to have ever produced themselves naturalistically. They are an intermediate cellular functioning assembly that cannot survive on its own and they are too restrictive in function to enable metabolism and reproduction at the level of criticality to be considered plausible for life.

Their simplicity relative to RNA and DNA make them an attractive possibility, but they are not strategic enough, robust enough or in any producible using naturalistic processes.