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Motivated by the theory of reaction kinetics based on nonequilibrium thermodynamics and the linear stability of driven reaction-diffusion, we apply the Fokker-Planck equation to describe the population dynamics of an ensemble of reactive…
We present a geometric framework to study the growth-division dynamics of cells and protocells, and demonstrate that self-reproduction emerges only when a system's growth dynamics and division strategy are mutually compatible. Using several…
The concept of (auto)catalytic systems has become a cornerstone in understanding evolutionary processes in various fields. The common ground is the observation that for the production of new species/goods/ideas/elements etc. the…
We study a family of networks of autocatalytic reactions, which we call hyperchains, that are a generalization of hypercycles. Hyperchains, and the associated dynamical system called replicator equations, are a possible mechanism for…
Diffusion-mediated surface phenomena are crucial for human life and industry, with examples ranging from oxygen capture by lung alveolar surface to heterogeneous catalysis, gene regulation, membrane permeation and filtration processes.…
We present here a system of self-propelled particles that follow a very simple motion law in continuous space in a deterministic and asynchronous way. This system of particles is capable of producing, depending on the particle density in…
All living systems -- from the origin of life to modern cells -- rely on a set of biochemical reactions that are simultaneously self-sustaining and autocatalytic. This notion of an autocatalytic set has been formalized graph-theoretically…
Surface growth, by association or dissociation of material on the boundaries of a body, is ubiquitous in both natural and engineering systems. It is the fundamental mechanism by which biological materials grow, starting from the level of a…
Background: Autocatalytic sets are often considered a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for the origin and early evolution of life. Although the idea of autocatalytic sets was already conceived of many years ago, only recently have…
The fields of Origin of Life and Artificial Life both question what life is and how it emerges from a distinct set of "pre-life" dynamics. One common feature of most substrates where life emerges is a marked shift in dynamics when…
Explaining the origin of life requires us to explain how self-replication arises. To be specific, how can a self-replicating entity develop spontaneously from a chemical reaction system in which no reaction is self-replicating? Previously…
We combine experiments and numerical simulations to investigate the emergence of clogging in a system of interacting paramagnetic colloidal particles driven against a disordered landscape of larger obstacles. We consider a single aperture…
We study self-replicating molecules under externally varying conditions. Changing conditions such as temperature variations and/or alterations in the environment's resource composition lead to both non-constant replication and decay rates…
Autocatalytic sets are sets of entities that mutually catalyse each other's production through chemical reactions from a basic food source. Recently, the reflexively autocatalytic and food generated theory has introduced a formal definition…
We study the dynamics of a system made up of particles of two different species undergoing irreversible quadratic autocatalytic reactions: $A + B \to 2A$. We especially focus on the reaction velocity and on the average time at which the…
Boundary-catalytic branching processes describe a broad class of natural phenomena where the population of diffusing particles grows due to their spontaneous binary branching (e.g., division, fission or splitting) on a catalytic boundary…
Autocatalytic systems are very often incorporated in the "origin of life" models, a connection that has been analyzed in the context of the classical hypercycles introduced by Manfred Eigen. We investigate the dynamics of certain networks…
The effect of diffusively correlated spatial fluctuations on the proliferation-extinction transition of autocatalytic agents is investigated numerically. Reactants adaptation to spatio-temporal active regions is shown to lead to…
Biological cells with all of their surface structure and complex interior stripped away are essentially vesicles - membranes composed of lipid bilayers which form closed sacs. Vesicles are thought to be relevant as models of primitive…
Every mathematical model describing physical phenomena is an approximation to model reality, hence has its limitations. Depending on characteristic values of the variables in the model, different aspects of the model and, e.g.,…