DNA certainly encodes for a significant amount of information as well. And why not proteins, there are a lot of proteins in a cell and you can also modify them in various ways. A cell has an enormous amount of state, any of it could theoretically store information like memory. There are a lot of different molecules active in a cell, in various modification states, at various locations, and all of that could encode information.
What this blog posts doesn't provide is any experimental evidence, this is a pure thought experiment. If RNA were to actually store memory, that would be great. Because determining the RNA sequences inside a cell is something we can do.
It appears that the brain cells in particular actually do develop significant changes to their DNA.
mRNA and tRNA move, so "active". Ribosome is also (re)active, and "the ribosome is itself composed of both RNA and protein, likely reflecting its own descent from an RNA world." [1]
[1]: The Ribosome Moves: RNA Mechanics and Translocation
True!
> What this blog posts doesn't provide is any experimental evidence, this is a pure thought experiment.
Yeah, so?
Why? Ad-homs aren't necessarily bad, it's contextual.
More informative to state the views you disagree with and say why.
My first reaction was to downvote your comment for the ad hominem, which doesn't contribute to the discussion. But I can see you are giving consideration to the article, and want to discuss it further - it's just that you haven't got enough out of it to make much of a start, and so this is your conversation starter.
I'm assuming you've labelled this a "fringe theory" by a "crackpot" not to be nasty, buy in order to start a conversation.
Let's start with your statement:
> I don't think there's any real doubt that memory is stored in neurons
The question is "how?". The article is postulating that each neuron is a computer, and RNA is a storage medium.
You say "my first objection would be that RNA would be far too slow for this purpose." That's because your thinking about RNA is limited to what you understand about RNA. You've learned about mRNA, which is one application that uses this molecular format, but it's not the only possible application.
The article suggests that the data transmission protocol which leads to thought and/or behaviour could be electrical, through simultaneous aggregated neuronal RNA based data processing.
Read the section he quotes from Ron Maimon, subtitled RNA ticker tape. What do you make of this statement?
"The RNA in a cell is the only entity which is active and carries significant bit density."