Population Dynamics of Autocatalytic Sets in a Compartmentalized Spatial World

Abstract

Autocatalytic sets are self-sustaining and collectively catalytic chemical reaction networks which are believed to have played an important role in the origin of life. Simulation studies have shown that autocatalytic sets are, in principle, evolvable if multiple autocatalytic subsets can exist in different combinations within compartments, i.e., so-called <i>protocells</i>. However, these previous studies have so far not explicitly modeled the emergence and dynamics of autocatalytic sets in <i>populations</i> of compartments in a spatial environment. Here, we use a recently developed software tool to simulate exactly this scenario, as an important first step towards more realistic simulations and experiments on autocatalytic sets in protocells.