The Origins of Cellular Life
Open accessAbstract
Understanding the origin of cellular life on Earth requires the discovery of plausible pathways for the transition from complex prebiotic chemistry to simple biology, defined as the emergence of chemical assemblies capable of Darwinian evolution. We have proposed that a simple primitive cell, or protocell, would consist of two key components: a protocell membrane that defines a spatially localized compartment, and an informational polymer that allows for the replication and inheritance of functional information. Recent studies of vesicles composed of fatty-acid membranes have shed considerable light on pathways for protocell growth and division, as well as means by which protocells could take up nutrients from their environment. Additional work with genetic polymers has provided insight into the potential for chemical genome replication and compatibility with membrane encapsulation. The integration of a dynamic fatty-acid compartment with robust, generalized genetic polymer replication would yield a laboratory model of a protocell with the potential for classical Darwinian biological evolution, and may help to evaluate potential pathways for the emergence of life on the early Earth. Here we discuss efforts to devise such an integrated protocell model.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Coacervates are difficult to imagine providing sufficient fluxes of energy and material to their interior, and if they were cradles of life they would have had to rely on diffusion, which would preclude them from serving as effective cradles.
“it is difficult to imagine how sufficient fluxes of energy and material can be made available to the interior of these isolated bubbles [75,76]. If coacervates were indeed the cradles of life, they would have had to rely on diffusion to deliver the materials required to develop pre-biotic chemistry, and that would seem to preclude them from serving as effective cradles.”
From Opinion: The Key Steps in the Origin of Life to the Formation of the Eukaryotic Cell (2024) · cites this paper as [76]
Split into 2 atoms — 0 confirmed, 0 partially supported, 0 disputed, 0 misattributed, 2 unverifiable. Expand the claim to see per-atom verdicts.
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredAssociation of the activated nucleotide poises the complex for reaction, and bond formation is essentially irreversible.
“Association of the activated nucleotide poises the complex for reaction, and bond formation is essentially irreversible (Figure 1E).”
From The paradox of dual roles in the RNA world: resolving the conflict between stable folding and templating ability (2013) · cites this paper as Schrum et al. 2010
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 64 · Cited by 255
- Authors
- Schrum, J. P., Zhu, T. F., & Szostak, J. W.
- Affiliations
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute (US)
- Venue
- Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology
- Publisher
- Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
- Published
- 2010-05-19
- Volume
- 2
- Issue
- 9
- Pages
- a002212-a002212
- ISSN
- 1943-0264 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC2926753
- OpenAlex
- W2098725272
- Cited by
- 255
- References
- 64
- Citations by year
- 2026: 19 · 2025: 14 · 2024: 24 · 2023: 18 · 2022: 15 · 2021: 23 · 2020: 16 · 2019: 14 · 2018: 15 · 2017: 10 · 2016: 10 · 2015: 13 · 2014: 10 · 2013: 13 · 2012: 19
- Type
- posted content
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Howard Hughes Medical Institute
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Origins and Evolution of Life
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › RNA and protein synthesis mechanisms
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Evolution and Genetic Dynamics
- Keywords
- origin of life, protocells, vesicles, membrane compartmentalization, nutrient uptake, early Earth, prebiotic chemistry, Darwinian evolution
- MeSH terms
- Origin of Life, Cell Membrane, Fatty Acids, Evolution, Chemical, Artificial Cells
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
