Robot chemist offers insight into the origins of life

A robotic “evolutionary machine” capable of studying the intergenerational evolution of chemical mixtures over long periods of time could help shed new light on the origins of life, say scientists.

A team of chemists from the University of Glasgow has developed the robot, which uses a machine learning algorithm to make decisions about which chemicals from a selection of 18 are combined in a reactor and how the conditions for the reaction are set. The robot is able to conduct the experiments on its own with minimal human supervision.

The process is designed to provide new insights into how the earth’s complex organic life evolved from its simple, non-living chemical origins by allowing the machine to conduct experiments for several weeks.

Measuring the mass index of the product of each experiment teaches the robot something new about the complexity of the molecules that are created in each reaction. This information will help him learn how to vary the experiment to create a more complex molecule in subsequent reactions – a digital version, the team hopes, of the natural selection for complexity that organic life produced.

published a new paper in the journal today Nature communication, the research team describes how the robot performed hundreds of experiments in six series of tests carried out over a period of four weeks.

Over this time, the team found not only that complex molecules were formed, but also that some of these new molecules persisted over many cycles despite being diluted. This suggests that other processes such as catalysis and replication may be taking place.

The system builds on previous research led by Lee Cronin, professor of chemistry at the university. Researchers in his Cronin group developed the chemical robot capable of autonomously performing chemical reactions and launched a “Spotify for Chemistry” to allow researchers to download chemical formulas to use in their own chemical robots.

They also recently published a paper on Assembly Theory, a formula they developed that quantifies the complexity of molecules and could be used to identify the tell-tale signs of the chemical building blocks of life.

“The work we’ve done over the past decade has led to this in many ways. Our chemical robot has really broadened the horizons of laboratory possibilities by automating basic tasks and allowing them to be performed over and over for long periods of time, ”says Cronin. “Very few chemical experiments take longer than a few days, but the natural development of chemical-biological systems took place over millions of years. If the robot can carry out dozens of recursive experiments over weeks and eventually months and even years, new possibilities, chemical ones, open up Learning complexity began at the beginning of life. As robotic chemists become more widely used in laboratories around the world and the digital democratization of chemistry continues, we hope that other researchers will get on board and use the platform we have developed to make our own contributions. “

Republished with permission from the University of Glasgow. Photo credit: University of Glasgow

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