When it comes to discussing open systems aren’t we getting a little ahead of ourselves here? There are still some very basic problems to solve before getting into hand-waving over the evolution of computers and human minds.
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0605863103v1
Solutions with as little as 1% enantiomeric excess (ee) of D- or L-phenylalanine are amplified to 90% ee (a 95/5 ratio) by two successive evaporations to precipitate the racemate [mixture]. Such a process on the prebiotic earth could lead to a mechanism by which meteoritic chiral {alpha}-alkyl amino acids could form solutions with high ee values that were needed for the beginning of biology.
1. A homochiral protein is of no use without a homochiral sugar to match with in the genetic code. Breslow and Levine refer to other researchers who have found possible ways this might have happened, though so far with only 10% success at best, and not under plausible prebiotic conditions.
2. It only worked with the alpha-alkyl amino acids (so far, although they said they are testing other kinds).
3. All the amino acid types would have to be left or right-handed. Consider that there are 20 different amino acids in living organisms (and please don’t start arguing over the definition of “living” 😛 ).
4. Unlike the protected and sterile environment of a lab, in realistic prebiotic conditions nothing is going to prevent the next natural disaster or even a medium-sized wave from messing it all up.
5. The need for repeated evaporations severely limits the physical space where all required ingredients could form and process their walk through configuration space. Now whether this walk is completely blind or random depends on whether certain chemical laws facilitate such processes.
6. This scenario rules out the deep-sea vent and open-ocean scenarios. Going by previous conferences that focus on abiogenesis, proponents of those views are undoubtedly going to search for any holes in this new scenario.
7. Evaporative environments expose the amino acids to destructive ultraviolet radiation.
8. There is still the problem of getting amino acids to link up into polypeptides which then need to form a functional sequence.
9. One mis-handed amino acid in a growing chain will still render it useless for biology. The chance for this happening, even if amino acids did link up somehow, grows with the length of the chain.
10. Even if a pure polypeptide formed, there still needs to be a genetic code that is also homochiral and capable of replicating.