"Can someone estimate the probability of something like that happening spontaneously?" With a lot of handwaving ... ---- If everything goes perfectly (each r

"Can someone estimate the probability of something like that happening spontaneously?" With a lot of handwaving ... ---- If everything goes perfectly (each random mutation flips the right nucleotide), you would need at least 77.5 years to get alcohol-production-capable RNA in influenza virus solely by spontaneous mutations. ---- Details: Checking one possible ethanol fermentation pathway [1]: at minimum you would need to synthesize two enzymes - pyruvate decarboxylase (1,691 base pairs [2]) and alcohol dehydrogenase (1,046 base pairs [3]). Influenza A has 13,558 base pairs [4] and mutates at about 0.0026 mutations per site per year [5] (so you get about 35 changed nucleotides per year). Putting it all together gives about 77.5 years. (1691+1046)/(13588*0.0026) = 77.47 ---- [1] http://biocyc.org/META/NEW-IMAGE?type=PATHWAY&object=PWY-5486 http://biocyc.org/META/NEW-IMAGE?type=PATHWAY&object=PWY... [2] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene/850733 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene/850733 [3] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene/854068 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene/854068 [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus [5] http://jvi.asm.org/cgi/content/full/80/7/3675 http://jvi.asm.org/cgi/content/full/80/7/3675