February 12, 2025 – A new study led by Dr. Moran Frenkel-Pinter from the Institute of Chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as well as Prof. Loren Williams from the Georgia Institute of Technology, investigates how chemical mixtures evolve over time, shedding light on potential mechanisms that contributed to the emergence of life on Earth. Published in Nature Chemistry, the research examines how chemical systems can undergo continuous transformation while maintaining structured evolution, offering new insights into the origins of biological complexity.

Chemical evolution refers to the gradual transformation of molecules in prebiotic conditions, a key process in understanding how life may have arisen from non-living matter. While much research has focused on individual chemical reactions that could lead to biological molecules, this study establishes an experimental model to explore how entire chemical systems evolve when exposed to environmental changes.

The researchers used mixtures containing organic molecules with diverse functional groups, including carboxylic acids, amines, thiols, and hydroxyls. By subjecting these mixtures to repeated wet-dry cycles—conditions that mimic the environmental fluctuations of early Earth—the study identified three key findings: chemical systems can continuously evolve without reaching equilibrium, avoid uncontrolled complexity through selective chemical pathways, and exhibit synchronized population dynamics among different molecular species. These observations suggest that prebiotic environments may have played an active role in shaping the molecular diversity that eventually led to life.

“This research offers a new perspective on how molecular evolution might have unfolded on early Earth,” said Dr. Frenkel-Pinter. “By demonstrating that chemical systems can self-organize and evolve in structured ways, we provide experimental evidence that may help bridge the gap between prebiotic chemistry and the emergence of biological molecules.” Beyond its relevance to origins-of-life research, the study’s findings may have broader applications in synthetic biology and nanotechnology. Controlled chemical evolution could be harnessed to design new molecular systems with specific properties, potentially leading to innovations in materials science, drug development, and biotechnology.

The research paper “Evolution of Complex Chemical Mixtures Reveals Combinatorial Compression and Population Synchronicity” is now available in Nature Chemistry and can be accessed here.

Researchers:
Kavita Matange1,2, Vahab Rajaei1,2, Pau Capera-Aragones1,2,3, John T. Costner1,2, Adelaide Robertson1,2, Jennifer Seoyoung Kim1,2, Anton S. Petrov1,2,4, Jessica C. Bowman1,2,4, Loren Dean Williams1,2,4, and Moran Frenkel-Pinter1,3,5

Institutions:
1) NASA Center for Integration of the Origins of Life, Atlanta, GA, USA
2) School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA
3) Institute of Chemistry, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel
4) NSF-NASA Center of Chemical Evolution, Atlanta, GA, USA
5) The Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem

Funding:
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (grant no. 1724274 to L.D.W.), NASA Center for Integration of the Origins of Life (grant no. 80NSSC24K0344), the Azrieli Foundation Early Career Faculty Grant (to M.F.P.), the Israel Science Foundation grant (grant no. 1611/22 to M.F.P.), the Minerva Foundation (to M.F.P.) and FEBS Foundation Excellence Award (to M.F.P.).