Origin of life research takes various forms but in general tries to understand how organic organization can bootstrap from inorganic structures or constraints, or how more sophisticated protocellular structures can bootstrap from more primitive forms. The demonstration of these transitions can be difficult to implement in the real world. Here we focus on how inorganic structures, formed in the presence of simple organics, can lead to novel hybrid inorganic-organic 3D architectures that support simple membrane formation. We analyzed both the mineral and hybrid structures, and vesicle formation in the presence of these geochemical surfaces using different physio-chemical techniques. This study shows a potential route that the first cellular structures could have taken through their interaction with hybrid organic-inorganic abiotic structures in their environment. Such model systems can also be insightful for artificial life studies regarding the importance of self-assembly promoted between two different systems: inorganic and organic.

We simulate the movement and agglomeration of oil droplets in water under constraints, like confinement, using a simplified stochastic-hydrodynamic model. In the analysis of the network created by the droplets in the agglomeration, we focus on the paths between pairs of droplets and compare the computational results for various system sizes.

As part of the European Horizon 2020 project ACDC, a chemical compiler is being developed that allows the self-assembly of artificial, three-dimensional, vesicular structures to be first simulated and then translated into reality. This work reports on simulations that shed light on an important aspect: How to disentangle inter-vesicular connections?

Within the context of the European Horizon 2020 project ACDC , we intend to develop a probabilistic chemical compiler, to aid the construction of three-dimensional agglomerations of artificial hierarchical cellular constructs. These programmable discrete units offer a wide variety of technical innovations, like a portable biochemical laboratory that e.g. produces macromolecular medicine on demand. For this purpose, we have to investigate the agglomeration process of droplets and vesicles under proposed constraints, like confinement. This paper focuses on the influence of the geometry of the initialization and of the container on the agglomeration.

Liquid droplets possess some life-like behaviors and have been the subject of artificial life studies. Life-like behaviors such as fission, fusion and movement can be artificially recreated exploiting highly simplified chemical systems. Recently we showed that droplet-based chemotactic systems can be interfaced with biological systems (1). We developed a chemotactic droplet able to move light cargos such as hydrogel alginate capsules embedded with living cells as a transporter. We transported efficiently and in a sterile way a few types of bacteria and yeast, and we are now modifying our protocols to transport efficiently human cell lines. We recently discovered that some eukaryotic cell lines release surfactants when placed in our artificial transport system, thereby reinforcing the interface between the artificial and living systems. This is an example of not only how the interface between artificial life and biological life could be designed but how the one system can augment the other. In this case the living system produces the surfactants that the droplet needs for cargo transport and the artificial system provides the transport for the otherwise sessile mammalian cells.