Emergence and Competing Selectivity of Minimal Self‐Assembly Lipoamino Acids

Abstract Designing synthetic chemical systems capable of mimicking life‐like behavior surely will help to understand the basic principles sustaining life, but also to create advanced materials potentially going beyond nature. Herein, we report the synthesis of a family of lipoamino acids from their individual components, which are free amino acids and lipid precursors, that allow us to study competition and selection in their formation. Octanoyl‐ L ‐histidine outcompetes from a pool of natural amino acids and a family of lipids, emerging as the fittest, where the observed selectivity is the result of a very efficient autocatalytic mechanism.