ArticleNature communications2021
Proliferating coacervate droplets as the missing link between chemistry and biology in the origins of life.
Article in Nature communications, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 43 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
43 citing papers in PubMed, 105 citations in OpenAlex.
- Protein-Independent Liquid-Liquid Phase Separation of Adenosine Triphosphate Under Crowded Conditions.Chemistry (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany) · 2026Article
- Elucidating the Reciprocal Interplay between Supramolecular Polymer Cytoskeletons and Fuel-Dependent Synthetic Cells.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2026Article
- Supramolecular nanofiber stabilization of microdroplets enables ultra-sensitive virus infection analysis.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Bottom-Up Coacervate-Based Artificial Cells: Integrating Cellular Hallmarks into Complex Life-Like Systems.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2026Review
- The RNA-First Fallacy: Conflating Evolutionary Ancestry with Prebiotic Primacy.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- The Borderlands of Foldability: Lessons from Simplified Proteins.Trends in chemistry · 2026Article
- Emergent properties of supramolecular peptide assemblies.Chemical communications (Cambridge, England) · 2026Review
- Biofilms: from the cradle of life to life support.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2026Review
- Emergent Chemical Reactivity and Complexity of RNA Condensates.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2025Article
- Orchestrating Self-Replication in Artificial Cells with Digital Microfluidics.Small (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany) · 2025Article
- Quantification of redox thermodynamics shifts within coacervates.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Article
- RNA-peptide interactions tune the ribozyme activity within coacervate microdroplet dispersions.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Anion-π interaction-induced phase separation as a prebiotic pathway to oxygenation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Mellitic Acid as a Stable Abiotic Precursor for Liquid-Liquid Phase Separation: An RNA-Independent Pathway for Prebiotic Compartmentalization.Chemistry (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany) · 2025Article
- Active Armoring of Protocell Condensates with Metal-Phenolic Networks.Small (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany) · 2025Article
- Light-Responsive Mononucleotide Coacervates.Chemistry (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany) · 2025Article
- Coacervates Composed of Low-Molecular-Weight Compounds- Molecular Design, Stimuli Responsiveness, Confined Reaction.Advanced biology · 2025Review
- The Possible Crystallization Process in the Origin of Bacteria, Archaea, Viruses, and Mobile Elements.Biology · 2024Article
- Thermophilic Behavior of Heat-Dissociative Coacervate Droplets.Nano letters · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The hypothesis that prebiotic molecules were transformed into polymers that evolved into proliferating molecular assemblages and eventually a primitive cell was first proposed about 100 years ago. To the best of our knowledge, however, no model of a proliferating prebiotic system has yet been realised because different conditions are required for polymer generation and self-assembly. In this study, we identify conditions suitable for concurrent peptide generation and self-assembly, and we show how a proliferating peptide-based droplet could be created by using synthesised amino acid thioesters as prebiotic monomers. Oligopeptides generated from the monomers spontaneously formed droplets through liquid-liquid phase separation in water. The droplets underwent a steady growth-division cycle by periodic addition of monomers through autocatalytic self-reproduction. Heterogeneous enrichment of RNA and lipids within droplets enabled RNA to protect the droplet from dissolution by lipids. These results provide experimental constructs for origins-of-life research and open up directions in the development of peptide-based materials.
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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.