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. We focus on networks of molecules that can interconvert, to give mixtures that can change their composition in response to external or internal stimuli.

Molecular recognition within or between molecules in such mixtures leads to their mutual stabilization, which drives the synthesis of more of the privileged structures. As the assembly process drives the synthesis of the very molecules that assemble, the resulting materials can be considered to be self-synthesizing. Intriguingly, in this process the assembling molecules are replicating themselves, where replication is driven by self-recognition of these molecules in the dynamic network.

When such systems are operated under far-from-equilibrium flow conditions, adaptation of the replicators to a changing environment can occur. Replicators that are able to catalyse reactions other than their own formation have also been obtained, representing a first step towards metabolism. Rudimentary Darwinian evolution of these systems has been achieved and the prospect of synthesizing life de-novo is becoming increasingly realistic.

Biography

Professor Sijbren Otto, Professor of Systems Chemistry, University of Groningen (born 1971) received his M.Sc. (1994) and Ph.D. (1998) degrees cum laude from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. He worked on physical organic chemistry in aqueous solutions in the group of Prof. Jan B. F. N. Engberts. In 1998 he moved to the United States for a year as a postdoctoral researcher with Prof. Steven L. Regen (Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania) investigating synthetic systems mediating ion transport through lipid bilayers. In 1999 he received a Marie Curie Fellowship and moved to the University of Cambridge where he worked for two years with Prof. Jeremy K. M. Sanders on dynamic combinatorial libraries.

Sijbren started his independent research career in 2001 as a Royal Society University Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge in the UK and accepted an appointment as Assistant Professor at the University of Groningen in 2009 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2011 and Full Professor in 2016. He directed the Chemistry MSc degree program at the University of Groningen from 2014-2019. Sijbren was awarded ERC starting (2010) and advanced (2017) grants from the EU and a VICI grant from NWO in the Netherlands and is one of six main applicants of the prestigious national gravitation program on Functional Molecular Systems (FMS).