Here, the reviewer did not like our use of the particular words “novelty” and “innovation”. o Use of the word novelty − Instances of “chemical novelty” in the manuscript replaced by “emergent chemical behaviour”. − On Page 8, after Equation 8, we removed sentence: The emergence of bistability will serve as a proxy for the emergence of other chemical novelties in the vesicle reactor model. Replaced whole paragraph, to read: In particular, in these initial stages, we will focus on the emergence of bistability in the vesicle reactor model—a dynamical feature deducible directly from the number and stability of the fixed points present (i.e., two asymptotically stable points separated by an unstable saddle point). We also expect that more complicated dynamical regimes could also be present in the model, like multi-stability or global phase space features such as limit cycles giving rise to sustained oscillations. However, investigation of these regimes will be deferred to later work: for the time being, the “emergent chemical behavior” referred to in the title will be restricted to bistability. We think this is a clearer explanation, and also uses the word “regime” suggested by the reviewer. o Use of the word innovation We kept the 2 occurrences of the word “innovation” in the abstract and the introduction. An innovation is defined as a “new method, idea or product” in the dictionary. We use the word to refer to new emergent chemical behaviour that the whole vesicle system exhibits (e.g., expanded steady states), which did not exist before. We think the use of this word is acceptable.
Remarkably, even reaction systems that have no chemical species in common could become R2 indirectly coupled to each other through the volume they share, by means of a sort of osmotic coupling.