[js1138]

Speed is pretty much irrelevant here. What is needed is understanding of the steps necessary. We already know that living things can replicate in minutes or even seconds. What we don't know is how the pieces came together and under what conditions. With understanding and under controlled conditions, the whole process could happen in minutes or hours. If this happens in the laboratory, it will tell us something about what early conditions might have been.

This is a big project and no drug company is investing in the research. It could take five years or five hundred. I' guessing between 20 and 50, but that's just an off the top of my head guess.

Who would have predicted fifty years ago that genetic engineering would be a huge industrial enterprise in the year 2005?

[MacDorcha]

Well, would slowing down amino acids and living cells be able to show us any further details? Would the changes not be more obvious if we could witness them at slower rates?