_A big advance came earlier this year,_
"A big advance came earlier this year, when Philipp Holliger of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, and colleagues unveiled an RNA enzyme called tC19Z. It reliably copies RNA sequences up to 95 letters long, almost half as long as itself. To do this, tC19Z clamps onto the end of an RNA, attaches the correct nucleotide, then moves forward a step and adds another. "It still blows my mind that you can do something so complex with such a simple molecule," Holliger says."
First life: The search for the first replicator - life - 15 August 2011 - New Scientist
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