Degradation, Osmosis and the Emergence of Basic Functionalities in Abiotic Synthetic Life-like Chemical Systems

Autonomous and interconnected multiscale out-of-equilibrium processes, including chemical and physical feedbacks, occur at the micron and lower scales during the heterotrophic synthesis of simple abiotic protocells, such as the ones developed in our group, with primitive life-like properties. These processes provide a solution to the autopoiesis and concentration problems in life’s origin. They also underlie the emergence of whole-vesicle functionalities like chemotaxis and self-reproduction involving dissipation and degradation which are integrated into our life-like abiotic systems. Such abiotic systems can be considered simple examples in the ontological classification of “life beyond biochemistry” (LBB), as they are based on carbon chemistry and, by design, do not use any biochemical compounds to integrate the basic system-level properties of natural life. This contribution analyzes a class of highly-out-of-equilibrium LBB systems we call “phoenix” and connects degradation pathways due to the presence of oxygenic species to enabling basic functionalities in these simple life beyond biochemistry systems such as protocell self-reproduction and the mechano-chemical squirting out into the medium of a fraction of their partially reacted lumen that enables heritable variation in our systems. We conclude that degradation within the lumen of mature micelles turning into vesicles may also be considered as a driving force for chemical evolution due to the number of new proximate reaction pathways it can open up.