ATL Standard

A recent study published in Nature Chemistry investigates the evolution of complex chemical mixtures under varying environmental conditions, providing insights into the prebiotic processes that might have led to life on Earth. The research was conducted by a team led by Loren Williams from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Moran Frenkel-Pinter from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Loren Williams, a professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, explained, "Our research applies concepts from evolutionary biology to chemistry. We know that everything in biology can be reduced to chemistry, but the idea of this paper is that in the right conditions, chemistry can evolve, too. We call this chemical evolution."

The study presents an experimental model that explores how entire chemical systems evolve when subjected to environmental changes, moving beyond previous research focused on individual chemical reactions leading to biological molecules.

"Chemical evolution is chemistry that keeps changing and doing new things," Williams stated. "It’s unending chemical change, but with exploration of new chemical spaces. We wondered if we could set up a system that does that without introducing new molecules ourselves — instead we had the system oscillate between wet and dry conditions."

These conditions mimic natural landscapes where water condenses and dries repeatedly due to Earth's day-night cycles.

The researchers identified three main findings: chemical systems can evolve continuously without reaching equilibrium; they can avoid uncontrolled complexity through selective pathways; and they show synchronized population dynamics among different molecular species. These results suggest environmental factors were crucial in shaping the molecular complexity necessary for life.

Moran Frenkel-Pinter noted, "This research offers a new perspective on how molecular evolution might have unfolded on early Earth. By demonstrating that chemical systems can self-organize and evolve in structured ways, we provide experimental evidence that may help bridge the gap between prebiotic chemistry and the emergence of biological molecules."

The study's implications extend beyond origins-of-life research, potentially impacting synthetic biology and nanotechnology. Controlled chemical evolution could be utilized to design molecular systems with specific properties, leading to advancements in materials science, drug development, and biotechnology.

This research is shared jointly with The Hebrew University of Jerusalem newsroom.