ArticleJournal of the American Chemical Society2005
RNA catalysis in model protocell vesicles.
Article in Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2005. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 103 papers.
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Who cites it
103 citing papers in PubMed.
- The Emergence of Life in the Light of Evolution.ArXiv · 2026Article
- MgJournal of the American Chemical Society · 2026Article
- Bottom-Up Coacervate-Based Artificial Cells: Integrating Cellular Hallmarks into Complex Life-Like Systems.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2026Review
- Entropy-Driven Amino Acid-Based Coacervates with Enzyme-Free Metabolism and Prebiotic Robustness.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2025Article
- The secret life of RNA and lipids.RNA biology · 2025Review
- Origin of the RNA World in Cold Hadean Geothermal Fields Enriched in Zinc and Potassium: Abiogenesis as a Positive Fallout from the Moon-Forming Impact?Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Electrophysiological Characterization of Monoolein-Fatty Acid Bilayers.Langmuir : the ACS journal of surfaces and colloids · 2025Article
- RNA Order Regulates Its Interactions with Zwitterionic Lipid Bilayers.Nano letters · 2025Article
- Biomimetic Materials to Fabricate Artificial Cells.Chemical reviews · 2024Review
- Hybrid Protocells Based on Coacervate-Templated Fatty Acid Vesicles Combine Improved Membrane Stability with Functional Interior Protocytoplasm.Small (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany) · 2024Article
- Protocell Effects on RNA Folding, Function, and Evolution.Accounts of chemical research · 2024Article
- Measuring Vesicle Loading with Holographic Microscopy and Bulk Light Scattering.ACS physical chemistry Au · 2024Article
- The Evolutionary Transition of the RNA World to Obcells to Cellular-Based Life.Journal of molecular evolution · 2024Article
- DNA-empowered synthetic cells as minimalistic life forms.Nature reviews. Chemistry · 2024Review
- Building Synthetic Cells─From the Technology Infrastructure to Cellular Entities.ACS synthetic biology · 2024Review
- The reproduction process of Gram-positive protocells.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Natural soda lakes provide compatible conditions for RNA and membrane function that could have enabled the origin of life.PNAS nexus · 2024Article
- Cyclophospholipids Enable a Protocellular Life Cycle.ACS nano · 2023Article
- RNA folding studies inside peptide-rich droplets reveal roles of modified nucleosides at the origin of life.Science advances · 2023Article
- Chemical Systems for Wetware Artificial Life: Selected Perspectives in Synthetic Cell Research.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Article
43 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
We are engaged in a long-term effort to synthesize chemical systems capable of Darwinian evolution, based on the encapsulation of self-replicating nucleic acids in self-replicating membrane vesicles. Here, we address the issue of the compatibility of these two replicating systems. Fatty acids form vesicles that are able to grow and divide, but vesicles composed solely of fatty acids are incompatible with the folding and activity of most ribozymes, because low concentrations of divalent cations (e.g., Mg(2+)) cause fatty acids to precipitate. Furthermore, vesicles that grow and divide must be permeable to the cations and substrates required for internal metabolism. We used a mixture of myristoleic acid and its glycerol monoester to construct vesicles that were Mg(2+)-tolerant and found that Mg(2+) cations can permeate the membrane and equilibrate within a few minutes. In vesicles encapsulating a hammerhead ribozyme, the addition of external Mg(2+) led to the activation and self-cleavage of the ribozyme molecules. Vesicles composed of these amphiphiles grew spontaneously through osmotically driven competition between vesicles, and further modification of the membrane composition allowed growth following mixed micelle addition. Our results show that membranes made from simple amphiphiles can form vesicles that are stable enough to retain encapsulated RNAs in the presence of divalent cations, yet dynamic enough to grow spontaneously and allow the passage of Mg(2+) and mononucleotides without specific macromolecular transporters. This combination of stability and dynamics is critical for building model protocells in the laboratory and may have been important for early cellular evolution.
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