Giant Vesicles “Colonies”: A Model for Primitive Cell Communities

Abstract

Current research on the origin of life typically focuses on the self-organisation of molecular components in individual cell-like compartments, thereby bringing about the emergence of self-sustaining minimal cells. This is justified by the fact that single cells are the minimal forms of life. No attempts have been made to investigate the cooperative mechanisms that could derive from the assembly of individual compartments. Here we present a novel experimental approach based on vesicles "colonies" as a model of primitive cell communities. Experiments show that several advantages could have favoured primitive cell colonies when compared with isolated primitive cells. In fact there are two novel unexpected features typical of vesicle colonies, namely solute capture and vesicle fusion, which can be seen as the basic physicochemical mechanisms at the origin of life.

Bacterial Division Proteins FtsZ and ZipA Induce Vesicle Shrinkage and Cell Membrane Invagination

“…Production of Permeable Giant Unilamellar Vesicles (GUVs)-FtsZ-containing GUVs were prepared according to a water-inoil emulsion method (30) to optimize the procedure described in Ref. 31.…”

Vesicle-based artificial cells as chemical microreactors with spatially segregated reaction pathways

“…Some of the most significant achievements concerning vesiclebased protocells include the incorporation of basic forms of replication 1 , communication 2 , transport 3 , biomolecule synthesis 4 , protein-protein interaction networks 5 and metabolism, amongst others [6][7][8][9][10][11] . There have also been significant advances in developing chemical and biological microreactors, either in vesicle or droplet form, that contain simple chemical reactions [12][13][14][15] .…”

From Cells as Computation to Cells as Apps

“…For example, it has been reported that lipid compartments can form clusters following simple adhesive forces [28,14]. Protein synthesis is still possible in such assemblies [27], and the idea of prototissue has been put forward, as supported by some pioneer work on membrane-to-membrane connective mojeties [49,42].…”