A Universal Chemical Constructor to Explore the Nature and Origin of Life

Abstract

In this chapter, we discuss the conceptual developments needed to take a new look at the nature of life, the origin of life, and how chemical systems can transition to evolutionary systems. Our hypothesis is that the route to life needs a chemical system that can store information about how the environment was in the past to increase its chances of survival into the future. This means life can be characterized as a complex chemical system with memory. To explore this hypothesis, we set out to develop an experimental approach to search chemical space and identify the complexification, selection, and ordering in complex mixtures. Akin to the idea of the universal constructor, we are looking for a chemical network that can emerge with slightly more complex chemical networks while persisting in each environment. We postulate that such a system is fundamental for the emergence of living systems. To measure the degree to which a system is living or not, we develop a new theory of emergent information, assembly theory, which allows us to identify if a system was built using information or not. By applying this to complex molecules, i.e., the measure of molecular complexity, we develop a detection system for molecular assembly, which is key for our experimental approach. This is because molecular assembly provides a robust and agnostic biosignature and technosignature detection tool and is measurable for real samples using a range of techniques, including mass spectrometry. To prepare for the search for life in our solar system as well as trying to make life in the laboratory, we take an open approach to explore the complexity found in unconstrained reaction mixtures and use analytical and statistical tools to look for system-level phenomena as well as recursive seeding of reactions with material from previous iterations to allow persistent materials and networks to emerge. Having an idea of what to look for is only part of the challenge as the chemical space to be searched is vast, but we are also working toward the digitization of chemistry, resulting in a modular chemical state machine we call the “chemputer” or chemical programming unit (ChemPU). Our robotic programming of chemistry and the analytical workflow to identify lifelike systems are now converging to one experiment, the origin of life constructor, which can explore chemical space in search of complexification, network generation, and ultimately an origin of life in the laboratory.