How protocells bridge the gap from chemistry to biology
Rachel Brazil talks to the scientists trying to recreate what the first cells were like, or to make their own versions
How did the first cells develop from a prebiotic soup of chemicals, probably around three and a half to four billion years ago? It’s been largely left to chemists to probe how early cellular life came into being. Ever since the famous Miller–Urey experiment in 1952, they have shown how some of the basic chemical building blocks of life might have been synthesised from simple organic molecules, but there is still a huge gap between this and the existence of replicating cells and biological life.
Origin-of-life researchers are hoping to plug that gap by studying protocells. To be plausible, protocells need to be compatible with modern biology. That leads to the question of whether the first cell-like compartments could have started with the phospholipid membranes we see in cells today.