ENVIRONMENT: a computational platform to stochastically simulate reacting and self-reproducing lipid compartments

'ENVIRONMENT' is a computational platform that has been developed in the last few years with the aim to simulate stochastically the dynamics and stability of chemically reacting protocellular systems. Here we present and describe some of its main features, showing how the stochastic kinetics approach can be applied to study the time evolution of reaction networks in heterogeneous conditions, particularly when supramolecular lipid structures (micelles, vesicles, etc) coexist with aqueous domains. These conditions are of special relevance to understand the origins of cellular, self-reproducing compartments, in the context of prebiotic chemistry and evolution. We contrast our simulation results with real lab experiments, with the aim to bring together theoretical and experimental research on protocell and minimal artificial cell systems.