Self-replicating molecular systems emergence

Competition drives the emergence of natural selection. Such behavior appears to be inevitable in any self-replicating chemical system in which resources are limited and some molecules have the ability to mutate. Over time, more efficient networks of autocatalytic molecules will increase in concentration at the expense of less efficient networks. In such a competitive milieu the emergence of increasing molecular complexity is inevitable new chemical pathways overlay the old. So it is that life has continued to evolve over the past four billion years of Earth history. 

Inspired by the rapidly emerging model systems of artificial life [40], we were confronted with the question of whether synthetic replicators shuffle their components to generate new hybrid replicators. To answer this, we made use of a self-replicating system developed at the same time as the adenine biphenyl replicator, but which had never been fully explored. The replicator, pictured at the top of Figure 25, was based on molecular recognition of thymine derivative (41) and xanthene derivative (40) by template (42). Coupling of the... 

Such models can be developed for the computational design of catalytic sterns that self organize and adapt themselves for optimum catalytic performance. Adaptation occurs in the reproduction process with mutation of the self-replicating molecules coupled to the metabolic system. The metabolic system acts as the bio-immune molecular recognition and response system. The conditions for the emergence of such a stem are far from equilibrium in the complex regime. The behavior as a function of time is unpredictable, similar to the class 4 system proposed by Wolfram. 

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