Systems chemistry

A fundamental difference exists between chemistry as it is performed in most laboratories and chemistry as it occurs in life. Laboratory processes are mostly designed such that the (closed) system goes thermodynamically downhill; i.e. the product state is of lower Gibbs free energy, yielding stable molecules that can be isolated and stored. Yet the chemistry of life operates in a very different way: most molecules from which living systems are constituted are turned over continuously and are not necessarily thermodynamically stable. Nevertheless, living systems can be stable, but in a homeostatic sense. Such homeostatic (open) systems are far-from-equilibrium and are dissipative: they need energy to maintain themselves. In dissipative controlled systems the continuous supply of energy allows a continuous transition between different supramolecular states, where systems with unexpected properties may be discovered. One of the grand challenges of Systems Chemistry is to unveil complex reactions networks, where molecules continuously consume energy to perform specific functions.

While multicomponent reactions have been studied for centuries, the idea of deliberately analyzing mixtures and reaction networks is more recent. The first mentions of systems chemistry as a field date from 2005.^[7][8] Early adopters focused on prebiotic chemistry combined with supramolecular chemistry, before it was generalized to the study of emergent properties and functions of any complex molecular systems. A 2017 review in the field of systems chemistry^[9] described the state of the art as out-of-equilibrium self-assembly, fuelled molecular motion, chemical networks in compartments and oscillating reactions.