Protocells bridging nonliving and living matter
Steen Rasmussen (Editor), Mark A. Bedau (Editor), Liaohai Chen (Editor), David Deamer (Editor), David C. Krakauer (Editor), Norman H. Packard (Editor), Peter F. Stadler (Editor)
This book offers a comprehensive resource on current attempts to create simple forms of life from scratch in the laboratory. These minimal versions of cells, known as protocells, are entities with lifelike properties created from nonliving materials, and the book provides in-depth investigations of processes at the interface between nonliving and living matter. Chapters put this state-of-the-art research in the context of theory, laboratory work, and computer simulations on the components and properties of protocells. The book also provides perspectives on research in related areas and such broader societal issues as commercial applications and ethical considerations. The book covers all major scientific approaches to creating minimal life, both in the laboratory and in simulation. It emphasizes the bottom-up view of physicists, chemists, and material scientists but also includes the molecular biologists' top-down approach and the origin-of-life perspective. The capacity to engineer living technology could have an enormous socioeconomic impact and could bring both good and ill
online resource (xxi, 684 s., [16] plates -s.) : illustrations
9780262282093, 0262282097
939059014
Print:
I OVERVIEW: BRIDGING NONLIVING AND LIVING MATTER
1 The Early History of Protocells: The Search for the Recipe of Life
2 Experimental Approaches to Fabricating Artificial Cellular Life
3 Semisynthetic Minimal Cells: New Advancements and Perspectives
4 A Roadmap to Protocells
II INTEGRATION
5 Steps Toward a Synthetic Protocell
6 Assembly of a Minimal Protocell
7 Population Analysis of Liposomes with Protein Synthesis and a Cascading Genetic Network
8 Constructive Approach to Protocells: Theory and Experiments
9 Origin of Life and Lattice Artificial Chemistry
10 Models of Protocell Replication
11 Compositional Lipid Protocells: Reproduction without Polynucleotides
12 Evolutionary Microfluidic Complementation Toward Artificial Cells
III COMPONENTS
13 Self-Replication and Autocatalysis
14 Replicator Dynamics in Protocells
15 Peptide Nucleic Acids as Prebiotic and Abiotic Genetic Material
16 The Core of a Minimal Gene Set: Insights from Natural Reduced Genomes
17 Parasitism and Protocells: Tragedy of the Molecular Commons
18 Forming the Essential Template for Life: The Physics of Lipid Self-Assembly
19 Numerical Methods for Protocell Simulations
20 Core Metabolism as a Self-Organized System
21 Energetics, Energy Flow, and Scaling in Life
IV BROADER CONTEXT
22 Gánti's Chemoton Model and Life Criteria
23 Viral Individuality and Limitations of the Life Concept
24 Nonlinear Chemical Dynamics and the Origin of Life: The Inorganic-Physical Chemist Point of View
25 Early Ancestors of Existing Cells
26 Prebiotic Chemistry, the Primordial Replicator, and Modern Protocells
27 Cell-like Entities: Scientific Challenges and Future Applications
28 Social and Ethical Issues Concerning Protocells