Protocells are thought to be precursors to life’s first living cells and, in their simplest form, are a self-organized spheres of lipids. New research is providing insight into the environment in which protocells on the early Earth could have formed. The work indicates that protocells may have been crowded by small molecules and polymers. This crowding could have affected reaction rates, changed the structure and activity of water, and even enhanced the capabilities of protocells.
The study, “Molecular Crowding and Early Evolution,” was supported by the Exobiology & Evolutionary Biology element of the NASA Astrobiology Program and published in the journal Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres