22 Molecular Self-Assembly and the Origin of Life

Nanoarchitectonics is a new interdisciplinary field within the NanoSciences, which investigates the principles responsible for the formation of higher-ordered functional structures starting from their nanoscopic building blocks like atoms and molecules. Such a bottom up approach is new within the field of contemporary technology, which has used very successfully the top down strategy for the miniaturization of fabrication processes during the last hundred years. However, nature has always worked bottom up, where the principles of self-assembly lead to crystal growth in the inorganic world, and, via molecular self-assembly, to functional structures in biology. For instance, the three-dimensional architecture of a nanomachine called the ribosome comprises the natural molecular assembler, which organizes the transition from the DNA informational blueprint into polypeptides and other functional units. To understand and make technological use of the underlying mechanism of this process is one of the major goals of modern Proteomics, where the relation between the DNA base sequence and the respective protein must be mastered. One approach to this question is to simplify the process by transferring it into a two-dimensional scenario, thus reducing the complexity of the three-dimensional architecture to an in-plane problem. Such a reduced coordination space may also be adequate for a primordial soup scenario, where the spontaneous self-assembly of abiotically produced organic compounds may be facilitated. The formation of highly ordered monolayers of the purine and pyrimidine DNA bases through physisorption mediated molecular self-assembly at a solid-liquid mineral interface and the subsequent stereospecific adsorption of amino acids is an example for the spontaneous creation of nanoscale order. We have proposed a functional role of this process for the emergence of life that may also lead towards the construction of genetically based supramolecular architectures for modern technical applications [1-4].