Self-Assembly And Chemical Reactions At The Transition To Life

Norman Packard, ProtoLife, S.r.l. and European Center for Living Technology, Venice, Italy

We will present progress of current efforts to synthesize life, in the form of microscopic protocellular entities that are self- maintaining, self-reproducing, and evolvable. These efforts involve a combination of chemical reactions together with self-assembly of structures such as micelles or vesicles from amphiphilic molecules. We will also explore the transition to life in a model system of chemical reactions and self-assembly, wherein spatially extended reaction diffusion dynamics are coupled with a generalization of Widom's model (a two dimensional Ising model with three-spin interactions) for amphiphilic systems.

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