ArticleCell reports2025
Quantifying the evolutionary paths to endomembranes.
Article in Cell reports, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
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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.
- Functional Specialization of Clathrin-Independent Endocytic Routes: Mechanisms and Cellular Roles.Traffic (Copenhagen, Denmark) · 2026Review
- Energetics and evolution: Response to Martin.Biochimica et biophysica acta. Bioenergetics · 2026Article
- Quantifying the fitness contribution of phagocytosis.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Resource allocation to cell envelopes and the scaling of bacterial growth rate.Physical biology · 2025Article
- Bioenergetics and the Evolution of Cellular Traits.Annual review of biophysics · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Eukaryotes exhibit a complex and dynamic internal meshwork of membranes-the endomembrane system-used to insert membrane proteins and ingest food. Verbal models explaining the origin of endomembranes abound, but quantitative considerations of fitness are lacking. Drawing on quantitative data on endomembranes allows for the derivation of two biologically grounded analytical models of endomembrane evolution that quantify organismal fitness: (1) vesicle-based uptake of small nutrient molecules, pinocytosis, and (2) vesicle-based insertion of membrane proteins, proto-endoplasmic reticulum. Surprisingly, pinocytosis of small-molecule nutrients does not provide a net fitness gain under biologically sensible parameter ranges, explaining why pinocytosis is primarily used for protein uptake in contemporary organisms. The proto-endoplasmic reticulum does provide net fitness gains, making it the more likely candidate for initiating the endomembrane system. With modifications, the approach developed here can be used more generally to understand the present-day endomembrane system and illuminate the origin of the eukaryotic cell.
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Registered trials
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