Establishing how life can emerge from inanimate matter is among the grand challenges of contemporary science. Chemical systems that capture life’s essential characteristics—replication, metabolism and compartmentalization—offer a route to understanding this momentous process. The synthesis of life, whether based on canonical biomolecules or fully synthetic molecules, requires the functional integration of these three characteristics. Here we show how a system of fully synthetic self-replicating molecules, on recruiting a cofactor, acquires the ability to transform thiols in its environment into disulfide precursors from which the molecules can replicate. The binding of replicator and cofactor enhances the activity of the latter in oxidizing thiols into disulfides through photoredox catalysis and thereby accelerates replication by increasing the availability of the disulfide precursors. This positive feedback marks the emergence of light-driven protometabolism in a system that bears no resemblance to canonical biochemistry and constitutes a major step towards the highly challenging aim of creating a new and completely synthetic form of life.

建立生命如何从无生命的事物中出现是当代科学面临的巨大挑战之一。捕获生命的基本特征（复制，代谢和分区）的化学系统为理解这一重要过程提供了一条途径。生命的合成，无论是基于规范的生物分子还是完全合成的分子，都需要对这三个特征进行功能整合。在这里，我们展示了一个完全合成的自我复制分子系统，在募集辅因子后如何获得将环境中的硫醇转化为二硫化物前体的能力，分子可以从中复制。复制子和辅因子的结合增强了后者通过光氧化还原催化将硫醇氧化为二硫键的活性，从而通过增加二硫键前体的可用性来加速复制。这种积极的反馈标志着光驱动的新陈代谢在系统中的出现，该系统与经典的生物化学没有任何相似之处，是朝着极富挑战性的目标创造新的，完全合成的生命形式迈出的重要一步。