Taking the right inspiration from nature

For centuries, chemists have been awestruck by the majesty of nature and its ability to solve problems. While parts of this have been great sources of inspiration, there is a feature that we have intentionally omitted when trying to replicate it: profligacy.

Nature expends enormous amounts of resources to make proteins that can fix minute problems instead of making an informed design of a solution. When your car gets a flat tyre, you use a functionally minimal machine to reinflate it – an air pump. Contrarily, nature fumbles in the proteinogenic and nucleic soups until it finds an immensely complex molecular Rube Goldberg machine that can do the same job. There is little that can stop an air pump from working. However, the chances of failure in a molecular Rube Goldberg machine grows exponentially with complexity. A small error can wreak havoc throughout the machine and cause it to fail. This requires its own repair, which is seen to by the same method.

Through prebiotic chemistry and evolution, nature has uncovered the prerequisites for life and has also provided us with an array of biological tools. While many of these tools are extremely complicated and fragile, most are much better at doing their specific jobs than anything artificial we have tried to use instead. Therefore, we must carefully choose what aspects we take inspiration from.