Our work addresses one step in this vision towards de novo lifethe division of the non-equilibrium compartments into daughter compartments. The division we showed is environmentdependent-when the environment is almost depleted of fuel, the mother droplet releases its offspring. It is questionable how "self" the self-division is in this scenario, but we argue that self-division of life as we know it is also strongly environment dependent-cells only divide when fed with sufficient nutrients. Conceptually, the division we demonstrated is closer to fungal sporulation-a mechanism by which fungi spread offspring during harsh conditions (in our case, starvation) to respawn when conditions are more favorable (in our case, when fuel is abundant). The resulting offspring in our work has no genotype, i.e., information containing molecules passed on from the mother compartment. We envision that such a genotype can come from a selfreplicating molecule that, during the short lifetime of the mother, is replicated at least as often as the number of offspring droplets produced. Given the roughly 12 droplets produced per mother droplet, that would imply one molecule of "genotype" needs to undergo four replication cycles during the roughly 10-minute lifetime of the mother to ensure that, statistically speaking, each daughter could receive one molecule of "genotype". Thus, replication should be fast, on the order of a few minutes per replication cycle. These replicating molecules should affect the behavior of the compartments, a minimal analog of genotype-phenotype mapping. Our work already offers a glimpse of how that could be possiblelong polyanions induce the ability to produce offspring. Put differently, if a replicating molecule produces long polyanions (or is a long polyanion itself), it can change the droplet phenotype by enabling its division. Another mechanism could involve the replicator extending the lifetime of the compartment so that it survives until the next fueling round.