{"title":"Perspective: Protocells and the Path to Minimal Life.","authors":"David Deamer","doi":"10.1007/s00239-024-10197-6","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The path to minimal life involves a series of stages that can be understood in terms of incremental, stepwise additions of complexity ranging from simple solutions of organic compounds to systems of encapsulated polymers capable of capturing nutrients and energy to grow and reproduce. This brief review will describe the initial stages that lead to populations of protocells capable of undergoing selection and evolution. The stages incorporate knowledge of chemical and physical properties of organic compounds, self-assembly of membranous compartments, non-enzymatic polymerization of amino acids and nucleotides followed by encapsulation of polymers to produce protocell populations. The results are based on laboratory simulations related to cyclic hydrothermal conditions on the prebiotic Earth. The final portion of the review looks ahead to what remains to be discovered about this process in order to understand the evolutionary path to minimal life.</p>","PeriodicalId":16366,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Molecular Evolution","volume":" ","pages":"530-538"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1000,"publicationDate":"2024-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11458682/pdf/","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Molecular Evolution","FirstCategoryId":"99","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s00239-024-10197-6","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"生物学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"2024/9/4 0:00:00","PubModel":"Epub","JCR":"Q4","JCRName":"BIOCHEMISTRY & MOLECULAR BIOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The path to minimal life involves a series of stages that can be understood in terms of incremental, stepwise additions of complexity ranging from simple solutions of organic compounds to systems of encapsulated polymers capable of capturing nutrients and energy to grow and reproduce. This brief review will describe the initial stages that lead to populations of protocells capable of undergoing selection and evolution. The stages incorporate knowledge of chemical and physical properties of organic compounds, self-assembly of membranous compartments, non-enzymatic polymerization of amino acids and nucleotides followed by encapsulation of polymers to produce protocell populations. The results are based on laboratory simulations related to cyclic hydrothermal conditions on the prebiotic Earth. The final portion of the review looks ahead to what remains to be discovered about this process in order to understand the evolutionary path to minimal life.
期刊介绍：
Journal of Molecular Evolution covers experimental, computational, and theoretical work aimed at deciphering features of molecular evolution and the processes bearing on these features, from the initial formation of macromolecular systems through their evolution at the molecular level, the co-evolution of their functions in cellular and organismal systems, and their influence on organismal adaptation, speciation, and ecology. Topics addressed include the evolution of informational macromolecules and their relation to more complex levels of biological organization, including populations and taxa, as well as the molecular basis for the evolution of ecological interactions of species and the use of molecular data to infer fundamental processes in evolutionary ecology. This coverage accommodates such subfields as new genome sequences, comparative structural and functional genomics, population genetics, the molecular evolution of development, the evolution of gene regulation and gene interaction networks, and in vitro evolution of DNA and RNA, molecular evolutionary ecology, and the development of methods and theory that enable molecular evolutionary inference, including but not limited to, phylogenetic methods.
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