it's much more than 1 in 2^90. this specific 45 base sequence was found by random search which strongly implies that the odds of finding such a protein are much much higher (i.e. >2^-30) since the experiment probably only searched a couple million proteins

Note that the Bennu asteroid sample had approximately 5 nanomoles of nucleotides per gram, meaning 20,000 moles of nucleotides could be delivered by a single 4 million ton asteroid, which if it were a spherical carbonaceous chondrite would be about 183 meters in diameter. An asteroid about that size impacts earth roughly every 36,000 years, and that mass of meteor material falls to earth each century.

If primordial earth's oceans had nucleotide concentrations comparable to Bennu, then there would be about 10^39 nucleotides in the ocean.

20000 moles of length 45 nucleotides is 306 metric tons? Spread out over millions of years, that does seem completely feasible.

Amazing! The 2009 Lincoln & Joyce paper you cited catalyzes one bond per hour on average. (Doubling time = 1 hour, but only one bond between oligonucleotides needed to double.)

OP's Gianni et al 2026 paper connects 45 nucleotides, taking 72 days (1700 hours) to yield 0.2%.

The latter effort is like drawing the whole owl.

That is incredible patience. Without access to the full article, I read only the abstract. I wonder if they used simulations to narrow the candidates?