Course objectives: to provide an overview of the current state-of-the-art in Systems Chemistry, and where this
relatively young chemical field is heading for. Systems Chemistry aims at demonstrating and reconstructing the
accumulation of complex matter, in order to find the chemical roots of biological organization. The main issue of the
course is to study on a timeline the spontaneous growth in size, abundance and organization of organic molecular
systems.
The spontaneous formation of the building blocks of life
Amino acids from the elements H, C, O, N and S; long chain alcohols and carboxylic acids from dihydrogen and
carbon monoxide, aromatic N-heterocycles from simple precursors like hydrogen cyanide, formamide, guanidine
or cyanamide; carbohydrates from formaldehyde: the formose reaction; nucleosides from N-heterocycles and
carbohydrates; alternatives to the classical prebiotic reaction pathways
Spontaneous condensation reactions of the building blocks of life
Peptides from amino acids; oligosaccharides from simple sugars; nucleic acids from nucleosides and phosphate
; lipids and fats from glycerol, amino alcohols, phosphate and long chain carboxylic (fatty) acids; mixed conjugates
from lipids and sugars, peptides and nucleic acids, lipids and nucleic acids, etc.
Molecular and supramolecuar properties of organic macromolecules
Liposomes from lipids; globular aggregations and extended architectures from peptides; folded nucleic acids; the
interaction of organic macromolecules with small organic molecules; the interaction of liposomes with organic
macromolecules
Systemic approach to the chemical origin of life
Boundaries for compartmented chemical systems from organic amphiphiles; self-templating nucleic acids and
peptides; autocatalytic and crosscatalytic chemical reaction networks; the origin of homochirality; compartmented
templating reactions and catalytic reaction networks; growth and division of natural compartments
What is life? How Chemistry becomes Biology
How to keep a dynamic chemical system out of thermodynamic equilibrium; the concept of dynamic kinetic
stability; how to maintain the concentration of useful catalysts in a replicating chemical system over many generations;
the concept of evolvability and self-evolvability; self-evolving synthetic living cells from the entirely inanimate
Evolvable molecular systems for sustainable development
Non biotic evolvable systems; perspectives for evolvable catalysts and materials
