Welcome in the COST CM0703 Action on Systems Chemistry website!
Systems chemistry is the joint effort of prebiotic and supramolecular chemistry assisted by computer science from theoretical chemistry, biology, and complex systems research to tackle dynamic supersystem integration including at least one autocatalytic subsystem. It is the bottom-up pendant of systems biology towards synthetic biology. The origin of life is seen as a major stimulus to organize research but the field is open for chemistries of limited prebiotic plausibility. Subsystems may be classified as genetic, metabolic, or compartiment-building. Pairwise integration into higher organized supersystems is expected to yield the knowledge enabling later the triple integration into minimal chemical cells. The integration approach will necessarily link to the question of asymmetric autocatalysis and chiral symmetry breaking, while the key challenge is to find the roots of Darwinian evolvability in chemical systems.
Action Chair: Sijbren Otto s.otto@rug.nl
Vice-Chair: Gonen Ashkenasy gonenash@bgu.ac.il
STSM Coordinator: Christoph Flamm xtof@tbi.univie.ac.at
Science Officer (COST Office): Lucia Forzi lucia.forzi@cost.eu
Administrative Officer (COST Office): Ms Svetlana Voinova svetlana.voinova@cost.eu
Grant Holding Institution: University of Groningen costcm0703@rug.nl
Duration: 03/04/2008 - 02/04/2012
WORKGROUPS
Workgroup 1 - Coordinator: Sijbren Otto
Integration of genetic and metabolic subsystems
Workgroup 2 - Coordinator: Peter Nielsen
Integration of genetic and compartmentalization subsystems
Workgroup 3 - Coordinator: Peter Walde
Integration of metabolic and compartmentalization subsystems
Workgroup 4 - Coordinator: David Hochberg
Chiral symmetry breaking and the quest for asymmetric autocatalysis in various reaction systems
Workgroup 5 - Coordinator: Christoph Flamm
Integration of theoretical chemistry, theoretical biology and complex systems (physics) research towards systems