In an environment of gentle shear, protocell growth and division are thus coupled processes. ❋ Unknown (2009)
Here we describe a simple and efficient pathway for model protocell membrane growth and division. ❋ Unknown (2009)
Our observations bring us closer to the laboratory synthesis of a complete protocell consisting of a self-replicating genome and a self-replicating membrane compartment. ❋ Unknown (2009)
What are rigorous definitions of: life protocell mechanism biological function ❋ Unknown (2009)
Or maybe Darwins faith in the future discovery of transitionals or Jack Szostacs faith in vesicles formed by fatty acids as the the cellular catalyst for the hypothetical protocell. ❋ Unknown (2009)
Small unilamellar fatty acid vesicles grow when fed with fatty acid micelles and can be forced to divide by extrusion, but this artificial division process results in significant loss of protocell contents during each division cycle. ❋ Unknown (2009)
Exploring Lifes Origins has a timeline of lifes evolution with sliders, and pages on understanding the RNA world and building protocells, with a nice animation of protocell replication. ❋ Unknown (2010)
Luigi Luisi, published a somewhat adventurous manifesto in Nature in 2001, declaring that the way to make a synthetic cell was to get a protocell and a genetic molecule to grow and divide in parallel, with the molecules being encapsulated in the cell. ❋ News From Mad Plato (2009)
If a protocell is made to encapsulate a short piece of DNA and is then fed with nucleotides, the building blocks of DNA, the nucleotides will spontaneously enter the cell and link into another DNA molecule. ❋ News From Mad Plato (2009)
At a symposium on evolution at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island last month, Dr. Szostak said he was “optimistic about getting a chemical replication system going” inside a protocell. ❋ News From Mad Plato (2009)
For example, this hypothesis would predict that some very simple polypeptides, most likely homopolymers, have biological activities that might enhance fitness of a protocell. ❋ Unknown (2006)
The most obvious such mechanism that I can think of would be to act as a cation channel, since this would provide a mechanism for a simple protocell to accumulate nutrients that are acidic (amino acids and fatty acids, for example). ❋ Unknown (2006)
If that population enhances the stability, growth, and reproduction of the protocell, selection will take place among protocells. ❋ Unknown (2006)
While the process would start with random peptides or nucleic acid, peptide/nucleic acid catalysis would cause substequent generations to be less and less random, favoring the populations whose synthesis is catalyzed by those sequences that happened to be trapped in the original protocell. ❋ Unknown (2006)
Amino acids are made by a number of prebiotic processes, so these would constitute the natural "food" of the protocell ❋ Unknown (2006)
I'm tentative because I would not insist that protocell formation and the catalytic activities of thermal proteins need go hand-in-hand. ❋ Unknown (2006)
