State of the Art: Artificial Chemistries

This review serves as an introduction to the field of Artificial Chemistries, whose origins were derived from requirements in Artificial Life and its inspiration from Chemistry. The paper is divided in three sections, the first introducing important aspects for contextualizing the field and relating them to the classification criteria used at the last part. The next section begins with a definition of Artificial Chemistry; common elements found in several examples are individually explained. Since the differentiation among all the varieties lies in those constitutive elements, all these elements instances are presented and compared. Finally, the original purpose for the arise of Artificial Chemistry as an independent field – the study of the transition to life – serves to this review as the main classificatory item for listing the relevant works in the field. Further division is then applied to other works not directly related to the contribution of knowledge to field of theoretical biology .