ArticleEntropy (Basel, Switzerland)2022
Formalising the Pathways to Life Using Assembly Spaces.
Article in Entropy (Basel, Switzerland), 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Chemputer and chemputation-A universal chemical compound synthesis machine.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Rapid Exploration of the Assembly Chemical Space of Molecular Graphs.Journal of chemical information and modeling · 2025Article
- Diet to Data: Validation of a Bias-Mitigating Nutritional Screener Using Assembly Theory.Nutrients · 2025Article
- Assembly theory and its relationship with computational complexity.Npj complexity · 2025Article
- Experimentally measured assembly indices are required to determine the threshold for life.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2024Article
- Reply to 'Experimental measurement of assembly indices are required to determine the threshold for life'.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2024Article
- Autocatalytic Sets and Assembly Theory: A Toy Model Perspective.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- On the salient limitations of the methods of assembly theory and their classification of molecular biosignatures.NPJ systems biology and applications · 2024Review
- Investigating and Quantifying Molecular Complexity Using Assembly Theory and Spectroscopy.ACS central science · 2024Article
- Minimizing Entropy and Complexity in Creative Production from Emergent Pragmatics to Action Semantics.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Assembly Theory: What It Does and What It Does Not Do.Journal of molecular evolution · 2024Article
- Article
- Origins of Genetic Coding: Self-Guided Molecular Self-Organisation.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Hippocampal and Medial Prefrontal Cortex Fractal Spiking Patterns Encode Episodes and Rules.Chaos, solitons, and fractals · 2023Article
- Irruption Theory: A Novel Conceptualization of the Enactive Account of Motivated Activity.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Ladderpath Approach: How Tinkering and Reuse Increase Complexity and Information.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Defending and integrating an organism by the immune system.Scandinavian journal of immunology · 2022Review
- Identifying molecules as biosignatures with assembly theory and mass spectrometry.Nature communications · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
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Abstract
Assembly theory (referred to in prior works as pathway assembly) has been developed to explore the extrinsic information required to distinguish a given object from a random ensemble. In prior work, we explored the key concepts relating to deconstructing an object into its irreducible parts and then evaluating the minimum number of steps required to rebuild it, allowing for the reuse of constructed sub-objects. We have also explored the application of this approach to molecules, as molecular assembly, and how molecular assembly can be inferred experimentally and used for life detection. In this article, we formalise the core assembly concepts mathematically in terms of assembly spaces and related concepts and determine bounds on the assembly index. We explore examples of constructing assembly spaces for mathematical and physical objects and propose that objects with a high assembly index can be uniquely identified as those that must have been produced using directed biological or technological processes rather than purely random processes, thereby defining a new scale of aliveness. We think this approach is needed to help identify the new physical and chemical laws needed to understand what life is, by quantifying what life does.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.