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An explanatory model for the emergence of evolvable units must display emerging structures that (1) preserve themselves in time (2) self-reproduce and (3) tolerate a certain amount of variation when reproducing. To tackle this challenge,…

Hydrogen cyanide (HCN) and formaldehyde (H2CO) are key precursors to biomolecules such as nucleobases and amino acids in planetary atmospheres; However, many reactions which produce and destroy these species in atmospheres containing CO2…

One of the proposed scenarios for the origin of life is the primordial RNA world, which considers that RNA molecules were likely responsible for the storage of genetic information and the catalysis of biochemical reactions in primitive…

Identifying reliable synthesis pathways in materials chemistry is a complex task, particularly in polymer science, due to the intricate and often non-unique nomenclature of macromolecules. To address this challenge, we propose an agent…

In living systems, we often see the emergence of the ingredients necessary for computation -- the capacity for information transmission, storage, and modification -- begging the question of how we may exploit or imitate such biological…

To celebrate Hans Frauenfelder's achievements, we examine energy(-like) "landscapes" for complex living systems. Energy landscapes summarize all possible dynamics of some physical systems. Energy(-like) landscapes can explain some…

We study the metallicities and abundance ratios of early-type galaxies in cosmological semi-analytic models (SAMs) within the hierarchical galaxy formation paradigm. To achieve this we implemented a detailed galactic chemical evolution…

Macrocycles are ring-shaped molecules that offer a promising alternative to small-molecule drugs due to their enhanced selectivity and binding affinity against difficult targets. Despite their chemical value, they remain underexplored in…

A continuous route from a disordered soup of simple chemical feedstocks to a functional protocell -- a compartment that metabolizes, grows, and propagates -- remains elusive. Here, we show that a homogeneous aqueous chemical mixture…

The rise in the availability of bacterial genomes defines a need for synthesis: abstracting from individual taxa, to see larger patterns of bacterial lifestyles across systems. A key concept for such synthesis in ecology is the niche, the…

We study the ability to maintain information in a population of reacting polymers under the influence of decay, i.e., spontaneous breakdown of large polymers. At a certain decay rate, it becomes impossible to maintain a significant…

One of the main goals of Artificial Life is to research the conditions for the emergence of life, not necessarily as it is, but as it could be. Artificial Chemistries are one of the most important tools for this purpose because they provide…

We are facing a real challenge when coping with the continuous acceleration of scientific production and the increasingly changing nature of science. In this article, we extend the classical framework of co-word analysis to the study of…

Mapping the chemical reaction pathways and their corresponding activation barriers is a significant challenge in molecular simulation. Given the inherent complexities of 3D atomic geometries, even generating an initial guess of these paths…

Due to recent advances in synthetic biology and artificial life, the origin of life is currently a hot topic of research. We review the literature and argue that the two traditionally competing "replicator-first" and "metabolism-first"…

Research investigating the origins of life usually focuses on exploring possible life-bearing chemistries in the pre-biotic Earth, or else on synthetic approaches. Little work has been done exploring fundamental issues concerning the…

The complex physicochemical structures and chemical reactions in living organism have some common features: (1) The life processes take place in the cytosol in the cells, which, from a physicochemical point of view is an emulsion of…

Current drug discovery is expensive and time-consuming. It remains a challenging task to create a wide variety of novel compounds with desirable pharmacological properties and cheaply available to low-income people. In this work, we develop…

Methanol occupies a central role in chemical synthesis and is considered an ideal candidate for cleaner fuel storage and transportation. It can be catalyzed from water and volatile organic compounds such as carbon dioxide, thereby offering…

The discovery of new energetic materials remains a pressing challenge hindered by limited availability of high-quality data. To address this, we have developed generative molecular language models that have been pretrained on extensive…