Microfluidic technology allows one to investigate in parallel a whole combinatorial set of support systems, to screen for capabilities of heightened autonomous functionality. The simplest systems of this
type are the gradient reactors being developed by RUB-BioMIP within the PACE project, which allow concentration as well as temperature gradients to be established across a microfluidic chip (see also the conceptional design, right image) enabling a kind of spatial phase diagram of behaviours of candidate artificial cells to be evaluated in a single experiment.
The following devices were successfully implemented in PACE: