EAGER Collaborative Proposal: A microfluidic platform for the discovery of new, life-like chemical systems

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With this award, the Chemistry of Life Processes Program in the Chemistry Division is funding Dr. David Baum and collaborators from the University of Wisconsin - Madison and Dr. David Eddington from the University of Illinois - Chicago to develop a microfluidic platform for the discovery of new, life-like chemical systems. There is a lack of knowledge about how new life-like chemical systems, having the capacity for reproducing and evolving, can emerge. The researchers are developing a device to screen complex chemical mixtures in order to find life-like systems that can grow over a mineral surface and can evolve more efficient growth over time. The goal of the project is the discovery of new life-like chemical systems, which would advance the understanding of how life originated on earth. The new experimental approach of this research is used to engage students and the public through presentations. It is also shared with diverse chemists, including high-school chemistry teachers, in a citizen-science effort to understand the nature of life's chemical origins.This research project involves building a simple microfluidic device and an associated experimental paradigm for flowing a complex chemical mixture, in a stripe, over a mineral surface. This surface contains possible building blocks of autocatalytic cycles as well as inorganic or organic sources of energy. The stripe is displaced across the mineral surface over a multiple day experimental window. This experimental arrangement enables selection for adsorbed autocatalytic sets that can propagate themselves along the surface. Furthermore, if there is spatial variation in such autocatalytic systems, the device selects for variants that can more rapidly colonize newly encountered mineral. Among other analytical methods, X-ray photoemission spectroscopy is used to detect changes in the concentration of adsorbed carbon or nitrogen. Such changes would indicate an adaptive response to selection for enhanced colonization and growth. When new autocatalytic chemical systems are detected, their chemical composition is characterized.