Author H. H. Zepik

Excerpt: The experimental realization of self-replication systems has permitted the representation of one of the key mechanisms of life in simple chemical terms. The chemical rendering of other main cellular mechanisms remains, however, elusive. One of these is homeostasis. There are different forms of homeostasis, and in quite general terms one may envisage that the chemical rendering of such a cellular feature might be constituted by a spherical bilayer structure which hosts chemical reactions and which is self-maintaining, because these reactions regenerate all components of the system that disap-pear in the reactions. One simple possible working unit of this kind, based on the structure of liposomes and on the notion of chemical autopoiesis, was proposed a few years ago