The evolution of life from the prebiotic environment required a gradual process of chemical evolution towards greater molecular complexity. Elaborate prebiotically-relevant synthetic routes to the building blocks of life have been established. However, it is still unclear how functional chemical systems evolved with direction using only the interaction between inherent molecular chemical...
How the immense complexity of living organisms has arisen is one of the most intriguing questions in contemporary science. We have started to explore experimentally how organization and function can emerge from complex molecular networks in aqueous solution (1). We focus on networks of molecules that can interconvert, to give mixtures that can change their composition in response to external...
