ArticleNature communications2020
Turbulent coherent structures and early life below the Kolmogorov scale.
Article in Nature communications, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed.
- Ciliary flow and morphology shape mass transport at the surface and within gastrovascular cavities of black corals.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Evolutionary transition from single-cell to multi-cell organisms: the role of surface waters and their hydrodynamics.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Pattern Formation in Agent-Based and PDE Models for Evolutionary Games with Payoff-Driven Motion.Bulletin of mathematical biology · 2026Article
- Primitive Compartmentalization for the Sustainable Replication of Genetic Molecules.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Review
- The requirement of cellularity for abiogenesis.Computational and structural biotechnology journal · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Major evolutionary transitions, including the emergence of life, likely occurred in aqueous environments. While the role of water's chemistry in early life is well studied, the effects of water's ability to manipulate population structure are less clear. Population structure is known to be critical, as effective replicators must be insulated from parasites. Here, we propose that turbulent coherent structures, long-lasting flow patterns which trap particles, may serve many of the properties associated with compartments - collocalization, division, and merging - which are commonly thought to play a key role in the origins of life and other evolutionary transitions. We substantiate this idea by simulating multiple proposed metabolisms for early life in a simple model of a turbulent flow, and find that balancing the turnover times of biological particles and coherent structures can indeed enhance the likelihood of these metabolisms overcoming extinction either via parasitism or via a lack of metabolic support. Our results suggest that group selection models may be applicable with fewer physical and chemical constraints than previously thought, and apply much more widely in aqueous environments.
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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.