Minimal self-replicating systems

Abstract

Examples of chemical systems capable of templating and catalysing their own synthesis—self-replicating systems—have begun to appear in the chemical literature over the last 15 years. For the biologist, these systems represent a link with the origin of life—their study can shed light on prebiotic chemical evolution. However, for the synthetic chemist, they represent the ultimate synthetic machine, capable of templating the production of a large number of perfect copies of themselves from a single original molecule. In this Review, we describe the design and synthesis of synthetic minimal replicating systems and provide a general overview and critique of the field.