Autocatalysis: A bottom-up approach to understanding the origins of life

Informations projet

Autocat

N° de convention de subvention: 681491

DOI

10.3030/681491

Projet clôturé

Date de signature de la CE 27 Mars 2016

Date de début 1 Mai 2016

Date de fin 31 Janvier 2022

Financé au titre de

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Coût total

€ 2 278 073,00

Contribution de l’UE

€ 2 278 073,00

Coordonné par

THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
United Kingdom

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - Autocat (Autocatalysis: A bottom-up approach to understanding the origins of life)

Période du rapport: 2020-11-01 au 2022-01-31

Résumé du contexte et des objectifs généraux du projet

This proposal focuses on the study of autocatalytic reactions that may be relevant to the origins of life. The overarching objective of this project is to understand how to generate minimal self-replicating systems using only simple chemical building blocks which mimic how biological systems behave.
How life first began is still not well understood, neither is what exactly life is, so life is difficult to define, and it is difficult to decide what a minimal 'living system' is and how to characterise it. Understanding how living and non-living things are different, and learning how to generate minimal 'living' systems is a scientifically interesting question and could lead to the development of new technologies that we cannot yet envision.
Several independent, but highly interrelated, research lines in this project all aim to demonstrate how simple molecules can become involved in complex chemical reactions networks. The main objectives are to explore new autocatalytic reactions, and to learn how to study the complex systems generated. We also aim to mimic important biological phenomena using purely chemical systems; such as selection from a pool of different replicators and to see if we can observe evolution in these processes.

Travail effectué depuis le début du projet jusqu’à la fin de la période considérée dans le rapport et principaux résultats atteints jusqu’à présent

We have developed a series of new autocatalytic reactions involving using different chemistries to form bonds, and we have examined in depth the relationship between structure and function in these systems and performed a series of mechanistic studies on how these new autocatalytic reactions operate and used the understanding of these systems gained in these studies in order to design improved systems.
We are now able to able to make autocatalytic reactions that rely on simply mixing together two reactive components in water, and have characterised the complex mixtures of products produced, and how these self replicate. We are able to make self-assembled structures like micelles and vesicles that mimic soap bubble and / or the membranes of biological cells. we have developed chemistry where autocatalysis only occurs in the presence of 'another catalyst' so that we are seeing catalysed-catalysis and characterised the complex behaviour obtained. We have learned how to make self-replicators that are not thermodynamically stable, so that they decompose to other species - counterintuitively this produces much more life like systems than simple autocatalytic reactions because it more closely mimics how biological systems behave.
We have started experiments aimed at observing competition phenomena and evolution using our new self-replicators, and are working on devising ways to keep 'out of equilibrium' systems out of equilibrium in a controlled way.

Progrès au-delà de l’état des connaissances et impact potentiel prévu (y compris l’impact socio-économique et les conséquences sociétales plus larges du projet jusqu’à présent)

While we anticipated being able to develop and characterise novel self-replicators and their dynamics, we did not anticipate (at the time the project was originally proposed) being able to generate far from equilibrium self-replicators and the huge amount of research that opens up. We anticipate that we will be able to deliver on observing some evolution-like processes before the end of the project and be able to control and take advantage of far-from-equilibrium replicators and gain control over their behaviour by consuming fuel and devising new self-replicators that have a type of metabolism. We have published much of our work from the first 30 months of this project in leading journals, which has been well received by the community and will facilitate the design (by ours and other groups) of new complex dynamic systems that mimic living systems

Autocatalysis figure