Systems chemistry and PACE
"Systems chemistry is the joint effort of prebiotic and supramolecular
chemistry with computer science from theoretical chemistry, biology,
and complex systems research to address a deeper understanding of
self-replication and self-reproduction and to tackle dynamic
supersystem integration embedding at least one autocatalytic subsystem.
It is the bottom-up pendant of systems biology towards synthetic
biology. The origin of life is seen as a major stimulus to organize
research but the field is open for chemistries of limited prebiotic
plausibility. Subsystems may be classified as genetic, metabolic, or
compartiment-building. Pairwise integration into higher organized
supersystems is expected to yield the knowledge enabling later the
triple integration into minimal chemical cells. The integration
approach will necessarily link to the question of asymmetric
autocatalysis and chiral symmetry breaking, while the key challenge is
to find the roots of Darwinian evolvability in chemical systems."
The above quotation is from the Memorandum of Understanding of a
newly
founded COST Action carrying the title "Systems Chemistry" (CM0703).[49]
Work inside PACE had made us aware that a protocell in whatever
implementation needs much more chemistry than what can fit into a
single Integrated Project. As stated earlier, the problem of
synthesizing a protocell - albeit easy to deal with by dynamic
simulation - is a tour de force for today's chemistry. It has many more
facets than outlined from the combined work of chemists inside PACE. It
is frontierland for chemistry even at the level of component systems.
When "Systems Chemistry" was proposed to the COST office, it was clear
to the proposers that only the coordinated work of more than twenty
labs in Europe might lead to a launch platform on which a protocell
implementation could start in several years.
The term "Systems Chemistry" appeared in the scientific literature
with an example based on an organic replicator whose stereochemical
features and pathway complexity could be resolved by a conjunction of
kinetic and computational studies based on DFT calculations.[16][26]
Meanwhile "systems chemistry" has developed to become one of the highly
infectuous memes in chemistry. Just as indicators: Three conferences in
2008 carry this title. Germany's Max Planck Society organized a
research symposium in Berlin in January, Germany's Beilstein Institute
had it's famous Bozen workshop on the subject in May [50],
and the ESF will have a "COST ESF High Level Research Conference" in
Maratea, Italy, in the beginning of October [51].
Pacifichem 2009, one of the major US-chemistry conferences, is said to
set a focus on this subject.
Coincidentally, the paper was web-published in the same days when
two PACE-related events took place in Venice, one of these defining the
scope and vision of today's COST Action CM0703.
It can be seen as an indirect scientific success of the work done in PACE to have ignited this development.