Figure 1.

Merging occurs between randomly assembled protocells. (a) Each colour (and a ‘1’ bit at each corresponding position on a protocell's representative binary string) indicates the presence of one of the four components needed for the protocell to be evolvable (here, N = 4). Randomly assembled lipid membranes form around the components. (b) Whenever two protocells merge, they share their contents. Sharing of contents is computed as a bitwise OR operation between each of the two parent strings of length N. (Online version in colour.)