ArticleNature chemistry2024
Small-molecule autocatalysis drives compartment growth, competition and reproduction.
Article in Nature chemistry, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 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
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- Compositional memory matters for early molecular systems.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Building Molecules by a Self-Replicator That Catalyzes Acyl Hydrazone Formation.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2026Article
- Autocatalytic cores in the diluted regime: classification and properties.Journal of mathematical biology · 2026Article
- How hard is it to encapsulate life? The general constraints on encapsulation.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
- Multi-Layer Autocatalytic Feedback Enables Integral Control Amidst Resource Competition and Across Scales.ACS synthetic biology · 2025Article
- The second wave of formose research.BBA advances · 2025Article
- Enhanced condensation kinetics in aqueous microdroplets driven by coupled surface reactions and gas-phase partitioning.Chemical science · 2024Article
- Protocell Effects on RNA Folding, Function, and Evolution.Accounts of chemical research · 2024Article
- Evolution at the Origins of Life?Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Origin & influence of autocatalytic reaction networks at the advent of the RNA world.RNA biology · 2024Review
- Multistable Protocells Can Aid the Evolution of Prebiotic Autocatalytic Sets.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
15 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Sustained autocatalysis coupled to compartment growth and division is a key step in the origin of life, but an experimental demonstration of this phenomenon in an artificial system has previously proven elusive. We show that autocatalytic reactions within compartments-when autocatalysis, and reactant and solvent exchange outpace product exchange-drive osmosis and diffusion, resulting in compartment growth. We demonstrate, using the formose reaction compartmentalized in aqueous droplets in an emulsion, that compartment volume can more than double. Competition for a common reactant (formaldehyde) causes variation in droplet growth rate based on the composition of the surrounding droplets. These growth rate variations are partially transmitted after selective division of the largest droplets by shearing, which converts growth-rate differences into differences in droplet frequency. This shows how a combination of properties of living systems (growth, division, variation, competition, rudimentary heredity and selection) can arise from simple physical-chemical processes and may have paved the way for the emergence of evolution by natural selection.
Indexed as
Identifiers
37550391What 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.