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SYSTEMS CHEMISTRY

Complex networks at life’s origins

Nature Chemistry volume 14, pages 597–599 (2022)Cite this article

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Explaining the controlled emergence and growth of molecular complexity at life’s origins is one of prebiotic chemistry’s grand challenges. Now, it has been shown that we can observe how the self-organization of a complex carbohydrate network can be modulated by its environment.

Life’s chemistry is organized into intricate reaction networks, which continuously build up and break down biomolecules. In today’s cells, these biochemical networks are mostly enzyme-catalysed, but the emergence of life about four billion years ago was likely to have been reliant on non-enzymatic chemical systems. Such systems sprang into existence through self-organization — driven and modulated by how the environment dictated the available feedstocks and catalysts, and how it fluctuated the reaction conditions. At first glance, it may seem difficult to imagine how, without any complex biochemical machinery, such dynamic systems escaped the doom of an uncontrolled combinatorial explosion1. What regulatory mechanisms might have allowed the first lifelike chemical systems to emerge and persist?

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Fig. 1: Self-organization of the Butlerow (formose) reaction in response to varying environmental conditions.

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  1. Twitter: @KamilaMuchowska

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  1. Institute of Supramolecular Science and Engineering, CNRS UMR 7006, Université de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France

    Quentin Dherbassy & Kamila B. Muchowska

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  1. Quentin Dherbassy
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  2. Kamila B. Muchowska
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Correspondence to Kamila B. Muchowska.

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Dherbassy, Q., Muchowska, K.B. Complex networks at life’s origins. Nat. Chem. 14, 597–599 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-022-00962-9

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