Self-organization and autocatalysis

Not only proteins and their oligomers, but nucleic acids as well give beautiful examples of self-organization - think of the formation of the DNA duplex, where the primary structure of the two strands determines the rules for self-assembly or the folding of t-RNA. 

Let s go back to much simpler systems, for example the self-aggregation of surfactant molecules. When surfactant molecules solubilize in water, often the process is slow at the very beginning, and gets faster with time the more surface bilayer is formed, the more the process speeds up, because there is more and more active surface where the next steps of aggregation can take place. The same 

The relation between self-organization and autocatalysis is discussed in some detail by Burmeister (Burmeister, 1998), and that between chirality and self-organization/self-replication in biopolymers is considered from the theoretical point of view by Avetisov and Goldanski (1991). 

---