ArticleeLife2017
Membranes, energetics, and evolution across the prokaryote-eukaryote divide.
Article in eLife, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 40 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
40 citing papers in PubMed.
- Cell geometry and membrane protein crowding constrain Escherichia coli growth rate, overflow metabolism, respiration, and maintenance energy.FEBS letters · 2026Article
- Energetics and evolution: Response to Martin.Biochimica et biophysica acta. Bioenergetics · 2026Article
- Demand-only energetics at 120 ATP per glucose: A reply to Lynch.Biochimica et biophysica acta. Bioenergetics · 2026Article
- Evolutionary bioenergetics of sporulation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Quantifying the fitness contribution of phagocytosis.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Cell Geometry and Membrane Protein Crowding Constrain Growth Rate, Overflow Metabolism, Respiration, and Maintenance Energy.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Mitochondrial transplantation: adaptive bio-enhancement.Cell death & disease · 2025Article
- Complexity myths and the misappropriation of evolutionary theory.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Bioenergetics and the Evolution of Cellular Traits.Annual review of biophysics · 2025Review
- Quantifying the evolutionary paths to endomembranes.Cell reports · 2025Article
- The bioenergetic cost of building a metazoan.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Review
- Review
- The minimum energy required to build a cell.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- How much (ATP) does it cost to build a trypanosome? A theoretical study on the quantity of ATP needed to maintain and duplicate a bloodstream-form Trypanosoma brucei cell.PLoS pathogens · 2023Article
- Whole-cell energy modeling reveals quantitative changes of predicted energy flows in RAS mutant cancer cell lines.iScience · 2023Article
- Evolutionary scaling of maximum growth rate with organism size.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Review
- Evolutionary bioenergetics of ciliates.The Journal of eukaryotic microbiology · 2022Review
- The role of mitochondrial energetics in the origin and diversification of eukaryotes.Nature ecology & evolution · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The evolution of the eukaryotic cell marked a profound moment in Earth's history, with most of the visible biota coming to rely on intracellular membrane-bound organelles. It has been suggested that this evolutionary transition was critically dependent on the movement of ATP synthesis from the cell surface to mitochondrial membranes and the resultant boost to the energetic capacity of eukaryotic cells. However, contrary to this hypothesis, numerous lines of evidence suggest that eukaryotes are no more bioenergetically efficient than prokaryotes. Thus, although the origin of the mitochondrion was a key event in evolutionary history, there is no reason to think membrane bioenergetics played a direct, causal role in the transition from prokaryotes to eukaryotes and the subsequent explosive diversification of cellular and organismal complexity.
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What OpenQuestion holds
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.