The Cronin Group

Research in the Cronin Group is motivated by the fascination for complex chemical systems, and the desire to construct complex functional molecular architectures that are not based on biologically derived building blocks.

Cronin Group take robotic steps towards “Artificial Chemical Evolution”

In a breakthrough published in Nature Communications, Prof Cronin and his group have described the robotically-facilitated evolution of oil droplets. The group used a custom built robot based on a RepRap 3D printer which generates the droplets, measures their fitness against a fitness function, and then uses a genetic algorithm to generate a new population. By demonstrating that these could be viable “chemical protocell models” as they can be evolved yet are based upon simple chemical ingredients, Prof Cronin hopes that we can start to answer some important questions about the origin of life.

Open Access paper in Nature Communicatsions

News item on University of Glasgow website

Article in Wired

Article at Phys.org

Article in Nature Chemistry News and Views

Prof. Leroy (Lee) Cronin

Prof Leroy (Lee) Cronin
Regius Chair of Chemistry
Advanced Research Centre (ARC)
Level 5, Digital Chemistry
University of Glasgow
11 Chapel Lane
Glasgow G11 6EW
Tel: +44 141 330 6650
Email: lee.cronin@glasgow.ac.uk

Latest Publications

529. Chemputer and chemputation—A universal chemical compound synthesis machine

528. Verification and execution of the scientific literature via chemputation augmented by large language models

527. Chemical programming of kinase inhibitors in a modular chemputer-based system

526. Organophosphonate Ligation Approach for the Controlled Assembly of Gigantic Polyoxometalate Clusters

525. Spontaneous assemblies of gigantic polyoxomolybdates; from structure and properties to synthetic methods

524. ElectroChemputer with integrated monitoring for programmable electrochemistry

523. Achieving Operational Universality through a Turing Complete Chemputer

522. AI-driven robotic crystal explorer for rapid polymorph identification

521. Rapid Exploration of the Assembly Chemical Space of Molecular Graphs

520. Programmable Microwaveable Chemistry in the Chemputer

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The Cronin Group

Cronin Group take robotic steps towards “Artificial Chemical Evolution”

Prof. Leroy (Lee) Cronin

Latest Publications

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