Implementing Darwinian evolution using synthetic self-replicators

In his dissertation, Juntian Wu contributes to a chemical system of self-replicating molecules, that shows signs of life while it is not made out of the standard building blocks of DNA. Wu focused on implementing Darwinian evolution in this chemical system. The topic can be broken down into three major parts: (1) a mechanistic study of replication and mutation, (2) control of out-of-equilibrium steady states, and (3) driving multi-building-block replicating systems out-of-equilibrium to explore the potential for achieving error correction. Wu demonstrates that synthetic self-replicators can replicate, mutate, survive, and evolve under dissipative out-of-equilibrium conditions—showing the potential to behave similarly to DNA/RNA.

Read more: Building life without DNA

Dissertation: https://hdl.handle.net/11370/95475c55-cd39-45e7-b733-3d30e047f575