The geometry of ecological interactions: simplifying spatial complexity. Czárán, T and Szathmáry, E. pp. 116–134. Eigen, M. and Schuster, P. (1979) this website The hypercycle. Springer-Verlag, Berlin. Könnyü, B., Czárán, T. and Szathmáry, E. Prebiotic replicase evolution in a metabolic system. (submitted) E-mail: konnyu@caesar.​elte.​hu Autopoietic Vesicles in Different Dynamic Regimes: Growth, Homeostasis and Decay Fabio Mavelli1, Pasquale Stano2,3 1Chemistry Department, buy LY333531 University of Bari; 2”Enrico Fermi” Study and Research Centre, Rome, Italy; 3Biology Department, University of RomaTre Autopoiesis, as developed by Maturana and Varela in the seventies (Varela 1974, Maturana 1980, Fleischaker 1988, Luisi 2003), represents one of the most

complete theories to represent the “blue print” of life. Originally developed as representation of cellular life, it poses as a main feature the self-maintenance of the cell, as due to a process of self-generation of the components from within the cellular boundary, a boundary which is itself a product from within. Thus, cellular life is seen as an organized network of processes, which has as a product its very organization. Different chemical implementations in the test tube has been presented during years

all based on surfactant self-assembling structures, as micelles (Bachman 1992), reverse micelles (Bachman 1992) and vesicles (Walde 1994) which, as recently emphasized, can be defined as autopoietic but not as living, since autopoiesis being the necessary, but not the necessary see more and sufficient, condition for life (Bitbol 2004). More recently, Zepik et al. (Zepik 2001) successfully reported on the first experimental attempt to model chemical autopoietic structures in three different regimes: continuous growth, homeostasis and decay, by Morin Hydrate introducing a surfactant decay reaction in the well-known growth-division approach to vesicle self-reproduction. In this

contribution a simple mechanism that reproduce the behaviors modeled by Zepik et al. will presented and discuss. This mechanism will be studied both in a deterministic a stochastic approach using, for the latter one, a suitable Monte Carlo program recently developed by one of us (Mavelli 2006). The final aim is to show as very simple self-assembly supra-molecular structures can exhibit behaviors that mimic real cells and as they could play a key role in the emergence of life on Earth. in our simple model, A second but non minor goal is to elucidate the roles of random fluctuations in this pathway showing as they can act as a selection rule by selecting only the more robust organisms, that is in our simple model, allowing to survive only larger structures. Bachmann PA, Luisi PL, Lang J (1992) Autocatalytic self-replicating micelles as models for prebiotic structures. Nature 357,57–59. Bachmann PA, Walde P, Luisi PL, Lang J (1990) Self-replicating reverse micelles and chemical autopoiesis. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 112,8200–8201.