Talk:Autocatalytic set

Formal definition has to be improved. Maybe the name for the "generate closure operator" cl should be changed, hmmm.

Dittrich 22:24, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

The section on "Linguistic aspects" is a little bit strange. Especially "no agreed-upon notion of autocatalytic sets exists today", which is true for any term. So the sentence contains little if not no information. The sentence is even misleading, because there is a nice mathematical definition fitting to practically all work that I currently know.

If there are other meanings of "autocatalytic sets", we should add reference to literature.

And we should remove statements that are controversial.

Dittrich 13:17, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

It would be nice to see an example. 139.184.30.135 16:35, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

The definition given on the page doesn't seem to properly capture the notion of an autocatalytic set AFAICS.

For example, let M be {A,B,C} and R be just {A+C -> B+C}. Then all the catalysts in R are in M, but the set can hardly be said to be autocatalytic because C is effectively inert. It would surely be better to say that every catalyst in in R must be a product of a reaction in R.

There should also be a reference to where this definition comes from. It is not the same as the one in the paper that is given as a reference.

Finally, what does "this can be formulated by a closure over a generating subset of M" mean? A more detailed explanation of this would be much appreciated.

139.184.30.132 (talk) 17:09, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

You can see an example of use of Input-Output Matrix formalization, as a convenient instrument for analysis of autocatalytic sets, on this article -->. Within Input-Output Matrix theory, the equilibrium of the activity of the catalytic set can be described as an Eigenvector. --Faustnh (talk) 03:04, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Suggest section on Lincoln and Joyce study
Lincoln and Joyce (2009), "Self-sustained Replication of an RNA Enzyme," is an extremely important empirical result. It goes a long way to establish that the origin of life and the subsequent emergence of greater complexity might be explained in terms of autocatalytic sets. I believe that the article should have a section on the study, and that it should be close to the beginning. I'm going to leave the writing to someone else, and dump a couple (hopefully useful) remarks here.

PZ Myers made some nice observations about the article on his blog:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/01/chemical_replicators.php

It happens that I spoke briefly with the Nobelist Tom Cech about the article. His problem with it (and other OOL studies) is that "pure ingredients" (coming from the laboratory supply house) are used to make the prebiotic "soup." I think it would be good, in order to maintain a balanced perspective, to locate an article or a reputable science blog making this point. ThomHImself (talk) 02:43, 2 January 2011 (UTC)