In PACE, ProtoLife's recent efforts toward modeling the route to artificial cells include two key contributions. One is the development of a new simple graphical language that enables one to characterize and classify the essential chemical features of different protocell schemes (both simulations and experimental schemes). Using this framework one can compare different approaches and achievements on the route toward artificial cells. In addition, one can precisely describe a roadmap of different possible paths to the construction of an artificial cell, including key intermediate milestones. The first discussion of this new graphical language is forthcoming in Rasmussen, Bedau, McCaskill, & Packard, "A roadmap to protocells," which is a chapter in the book Protocells: Bridging nonliving to living matter (MIT Press, 2007).
The other key contribution is work on the ability of molecular evolution to take control of collective physical phases of self-assembling amphiphilic structures like micelles and vesicles. In the model system of replicating combinatorial molecules ina ternary fluid of hydrocarbons, amphiphiles, and water, the presence of replicating molecules locally modulates the phases of the complex fluid, and the local amphiphilic configuuration influences the replication and mobility of the replicating molecules. The ensuing ability of the replicators to modify their own environment to enhance their own replication opens a route to analyzing the origin and evolution of artificial cells. This work is published in McCaskill, Packard, Rasmussen & Bedau, "Evolutionary self-organization in complex fluids," Phil. Trans. Royal Soc. B, 2007.