Following this research, in 2007, John McCaskill proposed to concentrate on an electronically complemented artificial cell, called the Electronic Chemical Cell. The key idea was to use a massively parallel array of electrodes coupled to locally dedicated electronic circuitry, in a two-dimensional thin film, to complement emerging chemical cellular functionality. Local electronic information defining the electrode switching and sensing circuits could serve as an electronic genome, complementing the molecular sequential information in the emerging protocols. A research proposal was successful with the European Commission and an international team of scientists partially overlapping with the PACE consortium commenced work 2008-2012 on the project Electronic Chemical Cells. The project demonstrated among other things that electronically controlled local transport of specific sequences could be used as an artificial spatial control system for the genetic proliferation of future artificial cells, and that core processes of metabolism could be delivered by suitably coated electrode arrays.