EVOLUTION AND SELF-ASSEMBLY

Organizers: Kristian Lindgren and Martin Jacobi (Chalmers Technical University – Sweden), Norman Packard (ProtoLife, Venice – Italy)

PURPOSE
This is primarily an internal PACE workshop to connect the evolutionary approaches from different groups. The themes include the objectives of WP2 “Evolution and self-asssembly”:
O-2.1 Exploration of evolutionary paths to forming artificial cells and evolving desired functionality.
O-2.2 Exploration of possibilities to avoid exploitation including various forms of spatial separation.
O-2.3 Exploration of evolvability of higher level cell functionality, including interactions between artificial cells.
O-2.4 Simulation of self-assembly of complex functional ensembles of artificial cells and their potential as distributed robotic system.

PROGRAM

Thursday, 16 March
09.00 – 09.15 Welcome
09.15 – 10.00 Quasi-Species and Aggregate Dynamics (Olof Görnerup, Martin Nilsson
Jacobi, Anders Eriksson, Steen Rasmussen)
10.00 – 10.45 Evolutionary probabilistic design to protocell (Irene Poli, Michele Forlin)
10.45 – 11.00 Coffee
11.00 – 11.45 Population dynamics of los alamos bugs (Roberto Serra, Timoteo Carletti)
11.45 – 12.30 Evolutionary design of complex chemical systems: simulation and
experiment (Norman Packard, Mark Bedau)
12.30 – 14.00 Lunch at ECLT
14.00 – 14.45 Working groups; discussions based on partner text contributions
14.45 – 15.00 Coffee
15.00 – 18.00 Ethics Workshop (see separate schedule)

Friday, 17 March
09.00 – 09.45 From self-replicating spots to self-replicating micelles: on the evolution of
self-assembly in reaction-diffusion systems. (John McCaskill, Thomas
Maeke, Ruedi Füchslin)
09.45 – 10.30 Update on evolutionary issues from the Los Alamos project (Steen
Rasmussen)
10.30 – 10.45 Coffee
10.45 – 11.30 Major Transitions in Artificial Chemistry (Barry McMullin)
11.30 – 12.15 (Ricard Solé ?)
12.15 – 14.00 Lunch at ECLT
14.00 – 14.45 Working groups; discussions on new 18 month plan
14.45 – 15.00 Coffee
15.00 – 18.00 Ethics Workshop (see separate scheddule)

Saturday, 18 March
09.00 – 09.45 Higher-order self-assembly (Jens Schroer)
09.45 – 10.30 Software for evolving chemical reaction networks (Andy Buchanan)
10.30 – 10.45 Coffee
10.45 – 11.30 (open)
11.30 – 12.15 Discussion
12.15 – 14.00 Lunch at ECLT
14.00 – 16.15 Working groups: Finalizing WP reports
16.15 – 16.30 Coffee
16.30 – 17.00 WP: Summary and status (Norman & Kristian)