Tuesday 07 April at 11:30, Online (please contact Guglielmo Militello, guglielmo.militello@ehu.eus, to participate)

Abstract: In this seminar we will share some ideas about the type of non-equilibrium physico-chemical processes from which more complex, protometabolic reaction pathways and transformation cycles can develop. The concepts of self-organization and self-assembly will be discussed, describing some concrete examples to illustrate them, and explaining why we consider they are relevant but not rich enough to account for minimal forms of metabolism. Autonomy, instead, will be suggested as a more adequate theoretical construct to grasp/explore metabolic dynamics, to be distinguished from a collection of coupled chemical reactions by a set of relational criteria that we are currently working on.