How Life got started on planet Earth is an important question to answer, because of the implications for Life in the wider Universe and prospects for Life here too. Several new findings have strengthened the view that Life’s particular architecture on this planet isn’t a contingent product of chance chemistry, but depends on intrinsic properties of the biomolecules themselves.
Self-Starter: Life Got Going All on Its Own …evidence that the particular molecular “code” is based on chemical attraction between particular amino acids and nucleotides, not an arbitary ‘choice’.
Imprints of the genetic code in the ribosome …research paper discussing the work that inspired the news-bite.
Was Our Oldest Ancestor a Proton-Powered Rock? …discusses the idea that mineral compartments on rocks provided the first ‘cells’ for primal biochemistry to occur.
The favoured ‘First Replicator’ theory identifies RNA as the first genetic material, but it tends to wind itself up in circles rather than meaningful strings. A possible solution is a short chemical called ethidium, which got in the way of the self-circling and forced the stuff to make open spirals.
Making the basic chemicals of RNA & DNA, the nucleotides, is rather tough, but new ways of making them efficiently are constantly being discovered. To claim ‘impossible’ is merely lazy theorising or tendentious rhetoric for Creationist purposes. Once created, they’re surprisingly easy to turn into longer strings of RNA, potential replicators all… see Dave Deamer’s essay on the odds of random replicators arising from chemistry.