While the process of artificial engineering of nucleic acid ligands is highly interesting to biology and biotechnology, the notion of aptamers in the natural world had yet to be uncovered until 2002 when two groups led by Ronald Breaker and Evgeny Nudler discovered a nucleic acid-based genetic regulatory element (which was named riboswitch) that possesses similar molecular recognition properties to the artificially made aptamers. In addition to the discovery of a new mode of genetic regulation, this adds further credence to the notion of an 'RNA World', a postulated stage in time in the origins of life on Earth.