alt Hacker NewsAmazing! 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?
I don't know if ChatGPT translated your rate for the 2026 paper right, but it says you mean:
* 99.8% of the starting molecules fail to form the desired product
* The ones that do, form 0.026 bonds per hour