Hybrid organic–inorganic structures trigger...
URL: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2300491120
Title: Hybrid organic–inorganic structures trigger the formation of primitive cell-like compartments
Author(s): Holler, S., Bartlett, S., Löffler, R. J., Casiraghi, F., Diaz, C. I. S., Cartwright, J. H., & Hanczyc, M. M.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2300491120
Publication Date: 10 August 2023
Resource Type: Link
Format: Research paper
Working Group: WG1-WG2-WG3
Affiliation(s): 1) Cellular, Computational and Integrative Biology Department, Laboratory for Artificial Biology, University of Trento, Povo 38123, Italy; 2) Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125; 3) Instituto Andaluz de Ciencias de la Tierra, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas–Universidad de Granada, Armilla, Granada 18100, Spain; 4) Instituto Carlos I de Física Teórica y Computacional, Universidad de Granada, Granada 18071, Spain; 5) Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87106.
Access Status: Open
Keywords:
Description: Alkaline hydrothermal vents have become a candidate setting for the origins of life on Earth and beyond. This is due to several key features including the presence of gradients of temperature, redox potential, pH, the availability of inorganic minerals, and the existence of a network of inorganic pore spaces that could have served as primitive compartments. Chemical gardens have long been used as experimental proxies for hydrothermal vents. This paper investigates a set of prebiotic interactions between such inorganic structures and fatty alcohols. The integration of a medium-chain fatty alcohol, decanol, within these inorganic minerals, produced a range of emergent 3 dimensions structures at both macroscopic and microscopic scales. Fatty alcohols can be considered plausible prebiotic amphiphiles that might have assisted the formation of protocellular structures such as vesicles. The experiments presented herein show that neither chemical gardens nor decanol alone promote vesicle formation, but chemical gardens grown in the presence of decanol, which is then integrated into inorganic mineral structures, support vesicle formation. These observations suggest that the interaction of fatty alcohols and inorganic mineral structures could have played an important role in the emergence of protocells, yielding support for the evolution of living cells.
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