Combinatory Chemistry is an Algorithmic Artificial Chemistry with a minimalistic design, which can display a wide range of emergent structures.

It appeared first in an ALIFE 2020 conference paper, and then it was further refined in an Artificial Life journal publication:

• Combinatory Chemistry: Towards a Simple Model of Emergent Evolution" by G. Kruszewski and T. Mikolov published at the ALIFE 2020 Proceedings.
• Emergence of Self-Reproducing Metabolisms as Recursive Algorithms in an Artificial Chemistry by G. Kruszewski and T. Mikolov in Artificial Life 27 (2022).

Here, you can find the [CODE] to run simulations and reproduce our results.

If you consider citing our article, you can use the BibTeX below:

@article{doi:10.1162/isal\_a\_00258,
    author = {Kruszewski, Germán and Mikolov, Tomas},
    title = {Combinatory Chemistry: Towards a Simple Model of Emergent Evolution},
    journal = {Artificial Life Conference Proceedings},
    volume = {},
    number = {32},
    pages = {411-419},
    year = {2020},
    doi = {10.1162/isal\_a\_00258},
    URL = {https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/isal_a_00258}
}

@article{10.1162/artl_a_00355,
    author = {Kruszewski, Germán and Mikolov, Tomáš},
    title = "{Emergence of Self-Reproducing Metabolisms as Recursive Algorithms in an Artificial Chemistry}",
    journal = {Artificial Life},
    volume = {27},
    number = {3–4},
    pages = {277-299},
    year = {2022},
    month = {03},
    issn = {1064-5462},
    doi = {10.1162/artl_a_00355},
    url = {https://doi.org/10.1162/artl\_a\_00355},
    eprint = {https://direct.mit.edu/artl/article-pdf/27/3–4/277/2003269/artl\_a\_00355.pdf},
}