The representation of a network in Figure was done using the Cytoscape software . Further network analyses to detect circular motifs in the catalytic networks (Figures ) were done with the Python package networkx. These cycles were identified in the Nmol precomputed composomes, and then examined for reproduction quality (RQ) using the GARD equation described above. Enclosed by a molecularly undefined cellular entity with specified molecular transport. In the bottom row shows how the three models are different in the depicting the environmental food molecules: In (A), food molecules catalytically accrete into a lipid assembly (i), becoming part of the network and participating in catalyzed oligomerizations (ii) . The latter facet is also true for (B), except that there is no catalyzed food entry; hence, the rate of food entry is not kinetically coupled to network dynamics, a synchronization mechanism necessary from full reproduction . Such separation is even more noticeable in (C), where there is a clear distinction between food and network molecules. More specifically, every molecule in the network is obligatorily produced in from a food non-catalytic precursor. As shown in both (i) and (ii), a network member Xj catalyzes a reaction in which a new copy of a network molecule Xi is produced from a food molecule S. The net stoichiometric reaction is XI+S2Xi, considered catalyzed replication of a network molecule, employing a monomolecular reaction from a food molecule to a catalytic member of the network (SXi). We note that such stoichiometric replication of each individual component does not guarantee selfreproduction of the network as a whole . Such single molecule self-copying is also not equivalent to autocatalysis (circular arrows in (A) and (B)) which may contribute to assembly self-reproduction as part of the entire mutually catalytic matrix . Simulation in a reactor with 100 lipid assembly instances running in parallel as described , all using a particular βij matrix (see Methods), which has two composome attractors. At any time point, each of the 100 assemblies can either belong to composome C1 (Blue), composome C2 (Orange), or to no composomes (drift) . Arrows and break-lines indicate changes to the external environment concentration of specific lipids. At the first break-line, the concentration of lipid 99 was halved. At the second break-line, the first change was reversed and the concentration of lipid 87 was doubled. While the first change was inconsequential, the second induced the transition of assemblies from C1 to C2.