Using the imperative approach detailed previously 47 , possible autocatalytic cycles for which all reactions were spontaneous according to thermochemical calculations were searched for using eQuilibrator API under the basic conditions which allow the formose reaction to proceed (e.g., for which the free energy for each reaction, ΔG rxn , is negative at pH 10). We restricted the search to cycles that don't include formaldehyde or methanol as cycle components (but which allow these molecules to be feeders or products) because these molecules are among the most connected molecules. Figures and show the distribution of ΔG rxn vs the total number of reactions as a cumulative function of generation. We found more than 5600 thermodynamically spontaneous cycles for catalytic nodes containing glycolaldehyde, 1,3-dihydroxyacetone, glyceraldehyde, 2,3,4-trihydroxybutanal, glycolic acid, propanedial, pyruvic aldehyde, 3-hydroxybutanal, 3-hydroxypropanal, hydroxyacetone, 3-oxopropanoic acid, pyruvic acid and glyoxal. Some catalytic nodes do not show autocatalytic cycles, but it is possible a more intensive search could yield still more autocatalytic cycles. Four examples of autocatalytic cycles are presented in Figure . Each cycle is accompanied by a histogram that displays the frequency of similar spontaneous cycles of different cycle lengths.