We show that autocatalytic networks of -machines and their population dynamics differ substantially between spatial (geographically distributed) and nonspatial (panmixia) populations. Generally, regions of spacetime-invariant autocatalytic networks—or domains—emerge in geographically distributed populations. These are separated by functional membranes of complementary -machines that actively tr...

Biological responses often obey Weber's law, according to which the magnitude of the response depends only on the fold change in the external input. In this study, we demonstrate that a system involving a simple autocatalytic reaction shows such a response when a chemical is slowly synthesized by the reaction from a faster influx process. We also show that an autocatalytic reaction process occu...

A set of chemical reactions that require a metabolite to synthesize more of that metabolite is an autocatalytic cycle. Such metabolic designs must meet specific conditions to support stable fluxes, hence avoiding depletion of intermediate metabolites. Here we show that most of the reactions in central carbon metabolism are part of compact autocatalytic cycles. As such, they are subjected to con...

The evolution of autocatalytic sets (ACS) is a widespread process in biological, chemical and ecological systems which is of great significance in many applications, such as the evolution of new species or complex chemical organizations. In this paper, we propose a competitive model with a m-selection rule in which an abrupt emergence of a macroscopic independent ACS is observed. By numerical s...

Shinpei Tanaka, Harold Fellermann, and Steen Rasmussen Graduate School of Integrated Arts and Sciences, Hiroshima University, 1-7-1 Kagamiyama, Higashi-Hiroshima 739-8521, Japan Center for Fundamental Living Technology (FLinT) Department of Physics, Chemistry and Pharmacy University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55 5230 Odense M, Denmark Santa Fe Institute, 1399 Hyde Park Rd, Santa Fe NM 87501...

Autocatalytic dissociation of water on the Cu(110) metal surface is demonstrated on the basis of X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy studies carried out in situ under near ambient conditions of water vapor pressure (1 Torr) and temperature (275-520 K). The autocatalytic reaction is explained as the result of the strong hydrogen-bond in the H2O-OH complex of the dissociated final state, which lower...

BACKGROUND In previous work, RAF theory has been developed as a tool for making theoretical progress on the origin of life question, providing insight into the structure and occurrence of self-sustaining and collectively autocatalytic sets within catalytic polymer networks. We present here an extension in which there are two "independent" polymer sets, where catalysis occurs within and between ...

Over the last years, analyses performed on a stochastic model of catalytic reaction networks have provided some indications about the reasons why wet-lab experiments hardly ever comply with the phase transition typically predicted by theoretical models with regard to the emergence of collectively self-replicating sets of molecule (also defined as autocatalytic sets, ACSs), a phenomenon that is ...