ReviewJournal of molecular evolution2014
Spontaneous encapsulation and concentration of biological macromolecules in liposomes: an intriguing phenomenon and its relevance in origins of life.
Review in Journal of molecular evolution, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed.
- Spontaneous Non-Catalyzed Molecular Reactions and Interactions in the Human Body: Biomedical Implications.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Review
- Butyrylcholinesterase-Loaded Liposomes and Polymersomes: Catalytic Parameters for Three Types of Substrates.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Article
- Prebiotic Peptide Synthesis: How Did Longest Peptide Appear?Journal of molecular evolution · 2025Review
- Membraneless protocell confined by a heat flow.Nature physics · 2025Article
- Measuring Encapsulation Efficiency in Cell-Mimicking Giant Unilamellar Vesicles.ACS synthetic biology · 2023Article
- Exploring the Lipid World Hypothesis: A Novel Scenario of Self-Sustained Darwinian Evolution of the Liposomes.Astrobiology · 2023Article
- Advancing synthetic biology through cell-free protein synthesis.Computational and structural biotechnology journal · 2023Review
- Hydrophobe Containing Polypeptoids Complex with Lipids and Induce Fusogenesis of Lipid Vesicles.The journal of physical chemistry. B · 2021Article
- Self-Emergent Protocells Generated in an Aqueous Solution with Binary Macromolecules through Liquid-Liquid Phase Separation.Chembiochem : a European journal of chemical biology · 2020Article
- Hydrodynamic accumulation of small molecules and ions into cell-sized liposomes against a concentration gradient.Communications chemistry · 2020Article
- Investigating Prebiotic Protocells for A Comprehensive Understanding of the Origins of Life: A Prebiotic Systems Chemistry Perspective.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2019Review
- Cell-Free Synthetic Biology Platform for Engineering Synthetic Biological Circuits and Systems.Methods and protocols · 2019Review
- Extrinsic stochastic factors (solute partition) in gene expression inside lipid vesicles and lipid-stabilized water-in-oil droplets: a review.Synthetic biology (Oxford, England) · 2018Review
- Encapsulation of Nucleic Acids into Giant Unilamellar Vesicles by Freeze-Thaw: a Way Protocells May Form.Origins of life and evolution of the biosphere : the journal of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life · 2017Article
- Evaluation of dextran(ethylene glycol) hydrogel films for giant unilamellar lipid vesicle production and their application for the encapsulation of polymersomes.Soft matter · 2017Article
- Engineering genetic circuit interactions within and between synthetic minimal cells.Nature chemistry · 2017Article
- Giant Polymersome Protocells Dock with Virus Particle Mimics via Multivalent Glycan-Lectin Interactions.Scientific reports · 2016Article
- Physical Routes to Primitive Cells: An Experimental Model Based on the Spontaneous Entrapment of Enzymes inside Micrometer-Sized Liposomes.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2015Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
One of the main open questions in origin of life research focuses on the formation, by self-organization, of primitive cells composed by macromolecular compounds enclosed within a semi-permeable membrane. A successful experimental strategy for studying the emergence and the properties of primitive cells relies on a synthetic biology approach, consisting in the laboratory assembly of cell models of minimal complexity (semi-synthetic minimal cells). Despite the recent advancements in the construction and characterization of synthetic cells, an important physical aspect related to their formation is still not well known, namely, the mechanism of solute entrapment inside liposomes (in particular, the entrapment of macromolecules). In the past years, we have investigated this phenomenon and here we shortly review our experimental results. We show how the detailed cryo-transmission electron microscopy analyses of liposome populations created in the presence of ferritin (taken as model protein) or ribosomes have revealed that a small fraction of liposomes contains a high number of solutes, against statistical expectations. The local (intra-liposomal) macromolecule concentration in these liposomes largely exceeds the bulk concentration. A similar behaviour is observed when multi-molecular reaction mixtures are used, whereby the reactions occur effectively only inside those liposomes that have entrapped high number of molecules. If similar mechanisms operated in early times, these intriguing results support a scenario whereby the formation of lipid compartments plays an important role in concentrating the components of proto-metabolic systems-in addition to their well-known functions of confinement and protection.
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