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A transient self-assembling self-replicator
Developing physical models of complex dynamic systems showing emergent behaviour is key to informing on persistence and replication in biology, how living matter emerges from chemistry, and how to design systems with new properties. Herein we report a fully synthetic small molecule system in which a...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5993787/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29884880 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-04670-2 |
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author | Colomer, Ignacio Morrow, Sarah M. Fletcher, Stephen P. |
author_facet | Colomer, Ignacio Morrow, Sarah M. Fletcher, Stephen P. |
author_sort | Colomer, Ignacio |
collection | PubMed |
description | Developing physical models of complex dynamic systems showing emergent behaviour is key to informing on persistence and replication in biology, how living matter emerges from chemistry, and how to design systems with new properties. Herein we report a fully synthetic small molecule system in which a surfactant replicator is formed from two phase-separated reactants using an alkene metathesis catalyst. The replicator self-assembles into aggregates, which catalyse their own formation, and is thermodynamically unstable. Rather than replicating until the reactants are fully consumed, the metastable replicator is depleted in a second metathesis reaction, and closed system equilibrium is eventually reached. Mechanistic experiments suggest phase separation is responsible for both replicator formation and destruction. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5993787 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-59937872018-06-11 A transient self-assembling self-replicator Colomer, Ignacio Morrow, Sarah M. Fletcher, Stephen P. Nat Commun Article Developing physical models of complex dynamic systems showing emergent behaviour is key to informing on persistence and replication in biology, how living matter emerges from chemistry, and how to design systems with new properties. Herein we report a fully synthetic small molecule system in which a surfactant replicator is formed from two phase-separated reactants using an alkene metathesis catalyst. The replicator self-assembles into aggregates, which catalyse their own formation, and is thermodynamically unstable. Rather than replicating until the reactants are fully consumed, the metastable replicator is depleted in a second metathesis reaction, and closed system equilibrium is eventually reached. Mechanistic experiments suggest phase separation is responsible for both replicator formation and destruction. Nature Publishing Group UK 2018-06-08 /pmc/articles/PMC5993787/ /pubmed/29884880 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-04670-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Article Colomer, Ignacio Morrow, Sarah M. Fletcher, Stephen P. A transient self-assembling self-replicator |
title | A transient self-assembling self-replicator |
title_full | A transient self-assembling self-replicator |
title_fullStr | A transient self-assembling self-replicator |
title_full_unstemmed | A transient self-assembling self-replicator |
title_short | A transient self-assembling self-replicator |
title_sort | transient self-assembling self-replicator |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5993787/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29884880 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-04670-2 |
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