Conspectus As the remit of chemistry expands beyond molecules to systems, new synthetic
targets appear on the horizon. Among these, life represents perhaps the ultimate synthetic …

Darwinian evolution, including the selection of the fittest species under given environmental
conditions, is a major milestone in the development of synthetic living systems. In this …

Background Replicators are the crucial entities in evolution. The notion of a replicator,
however, is far less exact than the weight of its importance. Without identifying and …

The ability of nucleic acids to act as templates for self-replication has been unique. In living
systems, single strands act as templates during phosphate transfer reactions. In …

Synthetic biology is a dynamic new area of research at the interface of science and
engineering, which is currently attracting much attention with impressive terms such as …

The present generation of artificial self replicating systems typically suffer from product
inhibition leading to parabolic growth and subsequently to survival of everybody. In recent …

In the last 20 years there has been a number of synthetic and natural product based
molecular replicators published in the literature. The majority of these systems have focused …

Explaining the origin of life requires us to elucidate how self-replication arises. To be
specific, how can a self-replicating entity develop spontaneously from a chemical reaction …