Systems chemistry sketches

Abstract

Systems Chemistry, the study of very complex chemical reaction systems, is just emerging. In part, this is fueled by the emergence of Systems Biology, itself spawned by the genome project and powerful computers. In a human cell, some 25,000 genes and their products, which, due to alternative splicing, may number in the hundreds of thousands, coordinate their dynamical behavior, carry out work cycles linking spontaneous and non-spontaneous chemical and physical processes, and build rough copies of themselves. Organisms are interlinked chemically and in other ways in the entire persistently coevolving biosphere. Perhaps the most complex chemistry occurs in the biosphere. The other obvious candidates for complexity are the giant molecular clouds in interstellar space. Since reproduction and natural selection applies to the biosphere but presumably does not for giant molecular clouds, the features of their chemical complexity presumably differ dramatically. © 2008 American Chemical Society.