ArticleNature communications2016
Collaboration between primitive cell membranes and soluble catalysts.
Article in Nature communications, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 35 papers.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
35 citing papers in PubMed, 76 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Dynamical interactions among protocell populations: Implications for membrane-mediated chemical evolution.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Protocellular energy transduction, information and fitness.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- A plant peptide with dual activity against multidrug-resistant bacterial and fungal pathogens.Science advances · 2025Article
- Catalytic Metal Ion-Substrate Coordination during Nonenzymatic RNA Primer Extension.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2024Article
- Superstructural ordering in self-sorting coacervate-based protocell networks.Nature chemistry · 2024Article
- Self-Assembly of Palmitic Acid in the Presence of Choline Hydroxide.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Periodic temperature changes drive the proliferation of self-replicating RNAs in vesicle populations.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Micellar Composition Affects Lipid Accretion Kinetics in Molecular Dynamics Simulations: Support for Lipid Network Reproduction.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Self-reproducing catalytic micelles as nanoscopic protocell precursors.Nature reviews. Chemistry · 2021Review
- Chemical communication at the synthetic cell/living cell interface.Communications chemistry · 2021Review
- Toward synthetic life: Biomimetic synthetic cell communication.Current opinion in chemical biology · 2021Review
- Fast bilayer-micelle fusion mediated by hydrophobic dipeptides.Biophysical journal · 2021Article
- The Grayness of the Origin of Life.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Oriented arrangement of simple monomers enabled by confinement: towards living supramolecular polymerization.Nature communications · 2021Article
- Microfluidic guillotine reveals multiple timescales and mechanical modes of wound response in Stentor coeruleus.BMC biology · 2021Article
- Origin of Species before Origin of Life: The Role of Speciation in Chemical Evolution.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Review
- Genetically controlled membrane synthesis in liposomes.Nature communications · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
One widely held model of early life suggests primitive cells consisted of simple RNA-based catalysts within lipid compartments. One possible selective advantage conferred by an encapsulated catalyst is stabilization of the compartment, resulting from catalyst-promoted synthesis of key membrane components. Here we show model protocell vesicles containing an encapsulated enzyme that promotes the synthesis of simple fatty acid derivatives become stabilized to Mg(2+), which is required for ribozyme activity and RNA synthesis. Thus, protocells capable of such catalytic transformations would have enjoyed a selective advantage over other protocells in high Mg(2+) environments. The synthetic transformation requires both the catalyst and vesicles that solubilize the water-insoluble precursor lipid. We suggest that similar modified lipids could have played a key role in early life, and that primitive lipid membranes and encapsulated catalysts, such as ribozymes, may have acted in conjunction with each other, enabling otherwise-impossible chemical transformations within primordial cells.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.