Omne Vivum Ex Vivo ... Omne? How to Feed an Inanimate Evolvable Chemical System so as to Let it Self-evolve into Increased Complexity and Life-like Behaviour

• Published in: Israel journal of chemistry Vol. 55; no. 8; pp. 851 - 864
• Main Author: Strazewski, Peter
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Weinheim WILEY-VCH Verlag 01.08.2015; WILEY‐VCH Verlag; Wiley Subscription Services, Inc
• Subjects: biosynthesis; Cells (biology); Chemists; Compartments; Emergence; Genetics; Macromolecules; Monomers; off-equilibrium chemistry; self-evolvable chemistry; synthetic biology; systems chemistry; Thermodynamic equilibrium
• ISSN: 0021-2148; 1869-5868
• DOI: 10.1002/ijch.201400175

“What I cannot create, I do not understand.” Richard Feynman’s bon mot seems almost tailored for experimental systems chemists to realise an important step in the chemical sciences: the creation of living synthetic cells from the entirely inanimate. The underlying idea needs to be simple so the system can develop naturally. This proposal aims at the realisation, viz. finding sets of experimentally feasible initial conditions, exploring varied compositions and analysing their outcomes, of a fully synthetic chemical micro‐compartmented and evolvable macromolecular system being fed with monomers and small molecular weight, high energy compounds, to keep the system permanently out of thermodynamic equilibrium and let it self‐evolve, thus gaining: 1) import‐export control of macromolecules across the compartment membranes; 2) food‐dependent increase in macromolecular size, i.e., polymer length inside the compartments; 3) sustained production of new macromolecules through the establishment of a (or several) de novo genetic code(s); leading to 4) the emergence of replicating macromolecular populations; and 5) the emergence of self‐evolved synthetic living cells.