We have demonstrated that there are mechanisms in reaction-diffusion-advection dynamics that support complex spatio-temporal patterns even without a homogenous inflow of free energy. By introducing a precursor to the fuel component in the Gray-Scott reaction scheme we can have a delay in the release of free energy available for the autocatalytic reaction.
In our future work we will try to identify possible reaction schemes that can give rise to the complex spatio-temporal dynamics like self-replicating spots studied in the extended Gray-Scott model. A starting point for this work is a further investigation of two types of reactions that has been previously tested for the fan reactor in McCaskill’s group. These tests successfully demonstrated the possibility to get standing wave patterns along the flow direction in the reactor (McCaskill et al 2005), using an enzyme-free DNA amplification system (Schöneborn et al 2001) and the isothermal enzymatic Strand Displacement Amplification (SDA) reaction (Schöneborn 2002).