Hall 123

Can assembly theory explain and quantify selection and evolution?

Anuran Pal

IMSc Chennai

Many operational definitions of life emphasize the role of Darwinian evolution in living systems, but it is not clear how this criterion can be translated into an unambiguous experiment. Assembly theory attempts to provide a general framework for quantifying selection dynamics in the evolution of an ensemble of assembled objects. We will explore the new theory and discuss molecular assembly, an experimentally tractable measure that can be used as a metric for determining if biotic factors are a causative effect for the formation of chemical samples.