All five genetic letters of DNA and RNA in an asteroid

@vivify said
https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.ady4368

Only 57 codons are needed to create E. coli bacteria. Not "millions".

I think maybe you mis-read that study. The E.coli genome that is needed to generate the 57 codon version is 4 million bases.

@vivify said
Hopefully this one works for you. Here's bacterium with 500,000 base pairs rather than millions:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27013737/

Even at 500,000 bases, this is basically impossible to synthesize in vitro without DNA polymerases and a template. This is why natural selection, evolution, cell biology etc. generally focus on what is possible to study, and the biologists leave the theorizing of the origin of life to the theologians and philosophers.

@wildgrass said
Even at 500,000 bases, this is basically impossible to synthesize in vitro without DNA polymerases and a template. This is why natural selection, evolution, cell biology etc. generally focus on what is possible to study, and the biologists leave the theorizing of the origin of life to the theologians and philosophers.

The point I was making was that if life was possible with only 57 Codons instead of 64 (a major difference since all 64 are thought to be needed) on top of needing only 531K base pairs (instead of millions) that can give insight into how life was first formed and cuts the "random chance" argument.

In short, the article shows the requirements for early life to exist could've been much simpler than what's required for life today.

@vivify said
The point I was making was that if life was possible with only 57 Codons instead of 64 (a major difference since all 64 are thought to be needed) on top of needing only 531K base pairs (instead of millions) that can give insight into how life was first formed and cuts the "random chance" argument.

In short, the article shows the requirements for early life to exist could've been much simpler than what's required for life today.

Decreasing the number of codons doesn't really change much in terms of complexity. A string of 500,000 nucleotides is the simplest we know to be possible, and the reaction to link nucleotides together does not happen without an enzyme. The only way to make the polymerase enzyme is inside an intact cell with all the requisite machinery needed to form proteins. Its a chicken-and-egg philosophical debate that is not solvable using current experimental tools.