A Transient Self-assembling Self-replicator

Overview

Journal Nat Commun

Specialty Biology

Date 2018 Jun 10

PMID 29884880

Citations 33

Authors

Ignacio Colomer

Sarah M Morrow

Stephen P Fletcher

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

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.

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