There are still one or two (billion years of) steps between amino acids and apes with Apple iPods, but we've got those as well. Studies have shown in exhaustive detail how amino acids combine to create larger units called nucleotides. These posed the ultimate jigsaw puzzle: once they come together into RNA, we've seen how it can evolve and improve (and we do mean SEEN: the Scripps Institute rigged up RNA replicators and watched them evolve before their eyes) and eventually arrive at DNA, but we didn't know how the darn things made RNA to begin with.

Emphasis on "didn't" - University of Manchester scientists decided to solve the problem, and please note that when U of M decides on something they don't mess around: they spent a full ten years smashing together the pre-life pieces until they eventually fit together. Just as they would have done in early Earth's oceans, which were a couple of orders of magnitude bigger than a beaker and for whom ten years is barely a blink.

A clip to take one's breath away

It's certainly interesting stuff.

We still don't have any studies proving that unliving DNA (i.e. like a virus) can convert to true life as we know it. It's true we have a mechanism whereby amino acids can become pseudo-life, but the last I've checked, we still don't have any insight as to how biological constructs (the "golems" of microscopic life) can become actual life.

Does someone have a link that can disprove that? I'm interested.