[continued from previous message]   
      
   been achieved.   
      
   If you insist on a cell, then we can already produce lipid membranes,   
   proteins and nucleic acids (up to full bacterial chromosomes) more or   
   less abiotically. The question is how to put them together, and how much   
   you need to kick start metabolism when you put them together. You'd need   
   a genome, RNA polymerases, ribosomes and the rest of the protein   
   assembly machinery, and a pool of amino acid monomers, ATP, and trace   
   elements. The unresolved (to my knowledge) is how much can be   
   bootstrapped through the synthesis and subsequent activity of proteins,   
   and how much has to be present at the start.   
      
   As you can see, while directed abiogenesis still has unresolved problems   
   the questions you quote from Deamer are not relevant to the question of   
   directed abiogenesis. The statements you dismissed as bullshit at first   
   sight all relate to directed abiogenesis. (On the one hand they're more   
   optimistic than I am - my guess is 25-50 years, provided scientific   
   advance doesn't stall; on the other hand they're better qualified than   
   me to make an estimate.)   
      
   --   
   alias Ernest Major   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)