AI Article Synopsis
- Compartments, like protocells, are essential in biology and may have been key to the origin of life by enclosing functional components needed for evolution.
- The study calculates the timescale for creating a minimal evolvable protocell and finds that when these protocells fuse and share information, the timescale is polynomially manageable.
- In contrast, without fusion, the time needed for evolution can grow exponentially, highlighting its significance for understanding the origins of life and biological processes.
Article Abstract
Compartments are ubiquitous throughout biology, and they have very likely played a crucial role at the origin of life. Here we assume that a protocell, which is a compartment enclosing functional components, requires such components in order to be evolvable. We calculate the timescale in which a minimal evolvable protocell is produced. We show that when protocells fuse and share information, the timescales polynomially in By contrast, in the absence of fusion, the worst-case scenario is exponential in We discuss the implications of this result for the origin of life and other biological processes.
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| http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5832742 | PMC |
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2018.0003 | DOI Listing |
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