title: Self-replication in colloids with asymmetric interactions.
abstract: Self-replication is a ubiquitous process in organisms. Understanding the key ingredients of self-replication is critical for developing self-sustaining systems in the laboratory. Moreover, finding the optimal conditions to generate accurate replicas and adequate output can accelerate industrial processes enormously. Here, we propose a scheme for self-replication where asymmetric interactions in colloids are used to find optimal self-replication conditions by controlling the input of energy. We generalize a recently developed kinetic Monte Carlo algorithm to treat both translational and rotational motions of Brownian anisotropic colloids. We report two main findings from our simulations: first, by fine tuning the particle interactions, highly accurate self-replication is achievable with a moderate sacrifice of reaction speed. Second, with the introduction of energy cycling to enable periodic assembly/disassembly of the system's components the replicator population grows exponentially. The exponential growth constant is a non-monotonic function of the period of the pulsed energy delivery.
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA. m-olvera@northwestern.edu.
authors.forename: Rui
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Joshua M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Dempster
authors.forename: Monica
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Olvera de la Cruz
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D016880:Anisotropy; D003102:Colloids / Q000737:chemistry*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004058:Diffusion; D007700:Kinetics; D008956:Models, Chemical; D009010:Monte Carlo Method; D009038:Motion
chemical_list: D003102:Colloids