Proof now found for abiogenesis?

Check this link:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/05/ribonucleotides/

Anybody found any other news on it? I'm surprised this hasn't made the news headlines!

 

I haven't seen this, but it's quite incredible. It's one seemingly small, but in fact massive step for the synthesis of life and our understanding of it.

All I can really say is wow.

 

Yes, it is surprising. The "RNA world" theory gets around the "chiken-egg" dilemma of DNA(software) requiring proteins (hardware) and vice versa. If RNA can catalyze its own replication, a soup of RNA molecules acting as both software and catalysts. The spontaneous synthesis of RNA strands from their basic building blocks isn't new. Eigen's experiments did this in 1974, but Eigen used a customized replication enzyme extracted from a living organism, which would obviously not have been around when life was created. A major criticism of the RNA world theory has been that the test tube experiments have often been failures, as the article explains. If the investigators have been able to come up with a "soup" that is similar to one that could have been around when life was born, that would meet one objection to the RNA world theory. Still there would be others, such as the fact that the genes coding for RNA differ significantly from one domain of life to another, suggesting that the common ancestor came before RNA replication was refined. So I think the experiment is exciting but the headline about "proof" of abiogenesis is premature. Has this research been published in a peer reviewed scientific journal?