[Soothesayer]

That’s right. Also, if you want to do PCR, you need a really expensive temperature changing machine and exact reagent concentrations. A difference of a few microliters of dNTPs or polymerase can really mess things up with small samples. You also need to include PH buffer to keep the molecule from breaking up.

This is a pretty clear indication of how nearly perfect the early Earth conditions had to be.

[aruanan]

This is a pretty clear indication of how nearly perfect the early Earth conditions had to be.

And that would be assuming the preexistence of buffers, dNTPs, a temperature change mechanism, a location other than the tightly controlled conditions in which "natural selection" could take place, as well as a way to get these RNA precursors into and out of the location where they were generated in order to have another round of synthesis that could then be selected for. At least with a reaction on a PCR machine, if you've gotten one started and it's going to finish on the weekend and you don't want the machine chugging away at 4C for a couple of days, you can just take the reaction off, sling it in a freezer, and then put it back on Monday morning to run the rest of the way. Of course, once you're done you can't leave anything at room temperature for more than six or eight hours while its being sequenced or you run the risk of breakdown and start getting bad, bad signal.

So far, the conditions are shown to be such that obtain nowhere other than in a lab. I like the excuse I often hear, though: "But it must have happened spontaneously and in an aleatory manner, because we're here! Besides, if you have enough time, anything can happen!"