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Important developments have been made recently in the experimental study of self-reproducing supramolecular systems based on micelles and vesicles (or liposomes); the processes are related to possible prebiotic transformations involving the forerunners of biological cells. Here we construct and study a kinetic model which describes both the formation and self-reproduction of vesicles. Until now, a detailed mechanistic understanding of vesicle formation has been lacking. Our approach is based on a novel generalisation of the Becker–Döring cluster equations which describe the stepwise growth and fragmentation of vesicular structures. The non-linear kinetic model we present is highly complex and involves many microscopic processes; however, by means of a systematic contraction of the complete set of kinetic equations to the macroscopic limit, we show that the model correctly captures the experimentally observed behaviour.
Coveney et al. (Thu,) studied this question.