Today's New York Times reports significant new progress in origins of life research:
Chemist Shows How RNA Can Be the Starting Point for Life
As has been pointed out many times here at EvC Forum, life is not thought to have originated with some unlikely lucky accident. The process is thought to have been slow, gradual and inevitable, requiring only fairly mundane chemical reactions.
Now a British chemist has identified a way that half the nucleotides of RNA, the two most difficult ones as it happens, can be created by a simple chemical process. Instead of beginning with a sugar and a base they began with a compound that is half-sugar and half-base. When a different half-sugar/half-base compound is added the RNA nucleotide ribocytidine phosphate forms. Add ultraviolet light and another RNA nucleotide forms. Future research will focus on finding a process by which the other two RNA nucleotides can form, on working out the process of membrane formation, and on the reason for "handedness" (all existing life uses only left-handed amino acids, we don't know why right-handed are never used).
--Percy