ArticleJACS Au2021
Population-Level Membrane Diversity Triggers Growth and Division of Protocells.
Article in JACS Au, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 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
15 citing papers in PubMed.
- Flip Flop-Associated Growth and Division of Synthetic Cells.ACS nano · 2026Article
- Increasing the Compositional Heterogeneity of Single-Chain Amphiphile Membranes Supported by Coacervate Cores Alters Stability and Properties of the Hybrid Protocells.Langmuir : the ACS journal of surfaces and colloids · 2026Article
- Dynamical interactions among protocell populations: Implications for membrane-mediated chemical evolution.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Protocell Dynamics: Modelling Growth and Division of Lipid Vesicles Driven by an Autocatalytic Reaction.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Chemically Driven Division of Protocells by Membrane Budding.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2024Article
- Protocell Effects on RNA Folding, Function, and Evolution.Accounts of chemical research · 2024Article
- Concepts of a synthetic minimal cell: Information molecules, metabolic pathways, and vesicle reproduction.Biophysics and physicobiology · 2024Article
- Cyclophospholipids Enable a Protocellular Life Cycle.ACS nano · 2023Article
- Model Atmospheric Aerosols Convert to Vesicles upon Entry into Aqueous Solution.ACS earth & space chemistry · 2023Article
- Plausible Sources of Membrane-Forming Fatty Acids on the Early Earth: A Review of the Literature and an Estimation of Amounts.ACS earth & space chemistry · 2023Review
- Elucidating N-acyl amino acids as a model protoamphiphilic system.Communications chemistry · 2022Article
- Membrane Structure Obtained in an Experimental Evolution Process.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Synthesis of lipid membranes for artificial cells.Nature reviews. Chemistry · 2021Review
- When Is a Reaction Network a Metabolism? Criteria for Simple Metabolisms That Support Growth and Division of Protocells.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Increasing complexity of primitive compartments.Biophysics and physicobiology · 2021Article
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
To date, multiple mechanisms have been described for the growth and division of model protocells, all of which exploit the lipid dynamics of fatty acids. In some examples, the more heterogeneous aggregate consisting of fatty acid and diacyl phospholipid or fatty acid and peptide grows at the expense of the more homogeneous aggregate containing a restricted set of lipids with similar dynamics. Imbalances between surface area and volume during growth can generate filamentous vesicles, which are typically divided by shear forces. Here, we describe another pathway for growth and division that depends simply on differences in the compositions of fatty acid membranes without additional components. Growth is driven by the thermodynamically favorable mixing of lipids between two populations, i.e., the system as a whole proceeds toward equilibrium. Division is the result of growth-induced curvature. Importantly, growth and division do not require a specific composition of lipids. For example, vesicles made from one type of lipid, e.g., short-chain fatty acids, grow and divide when fed with vesicles consisting of another type of lipid, e.g., long-chain fatty acids, and vice versa. After equilibration, additional rounds of growth and division could potentially proceed by the introduction of compositionally distinct aggregates. Since prebiotic synthesis likely gave rise to mixtures of lipids, the data are consistent with the presence of growing and dividing protocells on the prebiotic Earth.
Identifiers
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.