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POPS"Origins of Life in a Lab": From Amino Acids to Apes with iPods 
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.
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POPSEmbarrassing Scrabble hand maybe easier to go directly to the source. The site is very interesting, lots of droll cartoons and interesting scientific and mathematical stuff
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