ReviewMicrobiology and molecular biology reviews : MMBR1997
The first living systems: a bioenergetic perspective.
Review in Microbiology and molecular biology reviews : MMBR, 1997. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 75 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
75 citing papers in PubMed, 267 citations in OpenAlex.
- Abiotic synthesis of RNase-resistant phosphodiester and pyrophosphate-linked polymers via thermodynamically controlled wet-dry cycling.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Prebiotic β-Strand Peptides May Be a Plausible Solution to the Protocell Permeability Problem.Journal of molecular evolution · 2026Review
- Article
- Opsins are Phospholipid Scramblases in All Domains of Life.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Neural network properties of hydrophilic polymers as a key for development of the general theory of evolution.Royal Society open science · 2025Review
- The dynamics of prebiotic take-off: the transfer of functional RNA communities from mineral surfaces to vesicles.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Origin of the RNA World in Cold Hadean Geothermal Fields Enriched in Zinc and Potassium: Abiogenesis as a Positive Fallout from the Moon-Forming Impact?Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Electrophysiological Characterization of Monoolein-Fatty Acid Bilayers.Langmuir : the ACS journal of surfaces and colloids · 2025Article
- In the Beginning: Let Hydration Be Coded in Proteins for Manifestation and Modulation by Salts and Adenosine Triphosphate.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
- Directionality theory and the origin of life.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Fundamental constraints to the logic of living systems.Interface focus · 2024Review
- Decorated Vesicles as Prebiont Systems (a Hypothesis).Origins of life and evolution of the biosphere : the journal of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life · 2023Article
- The protometabolic nature of prebiotic chemistry.Chemical Society reviews · 2023Review
- The Prebiotic Kitchen: A Guide to Composing Prebiotic Soup Recipes to Test Origins of Life Hypotheses.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Review
- How to Build a Biological Machine Using Engineering Materials and Methods.Biomimetics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- Factoring Origin of Life Hypotheses into the Search for Life in the Solar System and Beyond.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Review
- Semipermeable Mixed Phospholipid-Fatty Acid Membranes Exhibit KLife (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- How Prebiotic Chemistry and Early Life Chose Phosphate.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2019Review
- Thermodynamics of Duplication Thresholds in Synthetic Protocell Systems.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2019Article
- Functional Properties of Amino Acid Side Chains as Biomarkers of Extraterrestrial Life.Astrobiology · 2018Article
15 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The first systems of molecules having the properties of the living state presumably self-assembled from a mixture of organic compounds available on the prebiotic Earth. To carry out the polymer synthesis characteristic of all forms of life, such systems would require one or more sources of energy to activate monomers to be incorporated into polymers. Possible sources of energy for this process include heat, light energy, chemical energy, and ionic potentials across membranes. These energy sources are explored here, with a particular focus on mechanisms by which self-assembled molecular aggregates could capture the energy and use it to form chemical bonds in polymers. Based on available evidence, a reasonable conjecture is that membranous vesicles were present on the prebiotic Earth and that systems of replicating and catalytic macromolecules could become encapsulated in the vesicles. In the laboratory, this can be modeled by encapsulated polymerases prepared as liposomes. By an appropriate choice of lipids, the permeability properties of the liposomes can be adjusted so that ionic substrates permeate at a sufficient rate to provide a source of monomers for the enzymes, with the result that nucleic acids accumulate in the vesicles. Despite this progress, there is still no clear mechanism by which the free energy of light, ion gradients, or redox potential can be coupled to polymer bond formation in a protocellular structure.
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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.