Science AMA Series: I’m Sijbren Otto, professor of Systems Chemistry.
Today we would like to talk with you about complex mixtures at the
interface between chemistry and biology and how far we have progressed
towards making life in a test tube! AMA!
Abstract
Hey Reddit! I am Sijbren Otto, joined today by Gaël Schaeffer (postdoc),
Andreas Hussain and Jim Ottelé (PhD students) to discuss systems
chemistry[1] and synthetic life. You can find a video describing our
research here! Back in 2010 we reported a system where self-replicating
molecules spontaneously emerge from a complex mixture, via an growth
breakage mechanism.[2,3] A few years later, we discovered another
system using the same concepts, but where mutations lead to the
consecutive emergence of two ‘species’ of replicators, one being the
ancestor of the previous one, thus mimicking an important process in
biological evolution.[4] This work received a fair amount of
attention from the media and from you guys on reddit. Our next
challenges are the incorporation of more biological features into
artificial systems, such as adaptation, Darwinian evolution or
metabolism and compartmentalisation, in order to one day make a chemical
system that captures all the essential elements of life! For more
information, visit our group website here or our list of publications
here. We are very happy to answer any and all questions relating to this
topic. [1] J. Li, P. Nowak, S. Otto, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2013, 135,
9222-9239. [2] J. M. Carnall, C. A. Waudby, A. M. Belenguer, M. C.
Stuart, J. J. Peyralans, S. Otto, Science 2010, 327, 1502-1506. [3]
M. Colomb-Delsuc, E. Mattia, J. W. Sadownik, S. Otto, Nat. Commun. 2015,
6, 7427-7433. [4] J. W. Sadownik, E. Mattia, P. Nowak, S. Otto, Nat.
Chem. 2016, 8, 264-269. Edit: Thanks a lot for all the questions! We are
overwhelmed by the amount of good questions right now. We are on to
answer some more! Edit 2: Thanks again for all the questions, we’ve all
had a lot of fun! However, we’re in the Netherlands and our dinner is
getting cold. We hope to come back in the future, and get some more
feedback from you all!