A recursive microfluidic platform to explore the emergence of chemical evolution

• David Doran,
• Marc Rodriguez-Garcia,
• Rebecca Turk-MacLeod,
• Geoffrey J. T. Cooper and
• Leroy Cronin

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2017, 13, 1702–1709, doi:10.3762/bjoc.13.164

• an automated recursive platform based on droplet microfluidics, could be used to induce artificial chemical evolution by iterations of growth, speciation, selection, and propagation. To explore this, we set about designing an open source prototype of a fully automated evolution machine, comprising

• : artificial life; autocatalysis; automated platforms; chemical evolution; evolution before genes; evolution first; microfluidics; Introduction The transition from an inanimate inorganic world, principally consisting of minerals, gases and small organic compounds, to the living world with the first life forms

• evolution in droplets Here, we propose a system for facilitating chemical evolution in populations of co-incubating aqueous, single emulsion microfluidic droplets. Each microdroplet can be considered an autonomous microreactor, loaded with a self-propagating chemical reaction network. However, it has been

Chemical systems, chemical contiguity and the emergence of life

• Terrence P. Kee and
• Pierre-Alain Monnard

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2017, 13, 1551–1563, doi:10.3762/bjoc.13.155

• systems become dispersed; i.e., once a stage in chemical evolution is reached where self-propagating, chemically simple compartmentalized systems have emerged [56]. As mentioned earlier, the expectations when approaching the question of life origins from a chemical system point of view are related to the

• emergence of properties that are systemic in nature. The different properties can occur at various levels: i) Systems are able to segregate chemicals, thereby explaining why a class of molecules or specific molecules have been selected or discarded during chemical evolution; ii) systems are able to allow

• chemical system that might explain how and why certain molecules or functions were selected during chemical evolution from a large inventory of molecules or possible chemical reactivities. It is certain that some examples used as illustrations in this article are too artificial to have played any role in

Synthesis of phosphoramidites of isoGNA, an isomer of glycerol nucleic acid

• Keunsoo Kim,
• Venkateshwarlu Punna,
• Phaneendrasai Karri and
• Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2014, 10, 2131–2138, doi:10.3762/bjoc.10.220

• and 31P NMR spectra. Acknowledgements This work was jointly supported by the NSF and NASA Astrobiology Program under the NSF Center for Chemical Evolution, Grant CHE-1004570 and by NASA Astrobiology: Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology Program (Grant NNX09AM96G).