ArticleScience advances2024
Did the exposure of coacervate droplets to rain make them the first stable protocells?
Article in Science advances, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 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
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- Polypeptide Sequence Effects on Virus Thermostability in Complex Coacervate Formulations.Biomacromolecules · 2026Article
- Programmable Spatial Demixing in Prebiotic Coacervates.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Phase separation of a heterochiral peptide-drug conjugate amplified by ionic interactions.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Complex Coacervate Emulsions as a Strategy to Stabilize Enzymes for Catalysis in Organic Solvents.ACS macro letters · 2026Article
- Emergent Chemical Reactivity and Complexity of RNA Condensates.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 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
- Stabilization of Condensate Interfaces Using Dynamic Protein Insertion.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2025Article
- On the Origin of Life on Earth: The Nanozymes Hypothesis, and More.Research (Washington, D.C.) · 2025Review
- Enzymatic Reaction Network-Driven Polymerization-Induced Transient Coacervation.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2024Article
- The molecular picture of the local environment in a stable model coacervate.Communications chemistry · 2024Article
- Did organs precede organisms in the origin of life?microLife · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Membraneless coacervate microdroplets have long been proposed as model protocells as they can grow, divide, and concentrate RNA by natural partitioning. However, the rapid exchange of RNA between these compartments, along with their rapid fusion, both within minutes, means that individual droplets would be unable to maintain their separate genetic identities. Hence, Darwinian evolution would not be possible, and the population would be vulnerable to collapse due to the rapid spread of parasitic RNAs. In this study, we show that distilled water, mimicking rain/freshwater, leads to the formation of electrostatic crosslinks on the interface of coacervate droplets that not only suppress droplet fusion indefinitely but also allow the spatiotemporal compartmentalization of RNA on a timescale of days depending on the length and structure of RNA. We suggest that these nonfusing membraneless droplets could potentially act as protocells with the capacity to evolve compartmentalized ribozymes in prebiotic environments.
Indexed as
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.