Prebiological Membranes and Their Role in the Emergence of Early Cellular Life
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Prebiological Membranes and Their Role in the Emergence of Early Cellular Life Susovan Sarkar1 · Souradeep Das1 · Shikha Dagar1 · Manesh Prakash Joshi1 · Chaitanya V. Mungi1 · Anupam A. Sawant1 · Gauri M. Patki1 · Sudha Rajamani1 Received: 13 August 2020 / Accepted: 8 November 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Membrane compartmentalization is a fundamental feature of contemporary cellular life. Given this, it is rational to assume that at some stage in the early origins of life, membrane compartments would have potentially emerged to form a dynamic semipermeable barrier in primitive cells (protocells), protecting them from their surrounding environment. It is thought that such prebiological membranes would likely have played a crucial role in the emergence and evolution of life on the early Earth. Extant biological membranes are highly organized and complex, which is a consequence of a protracted evolutionary history. On the other hand, prebiotic membrane assemblies, which are thought to have preceded sophisticated contemporary membranes, are hypothesized to have been relatively simple and composed of single chain amphiphiles. Recent studies indicate that the evolution of prebiotic membranes potentially resulted from interactions between the membrane and its physicochemical environment. These studies have also speculated on the origin, composition, function and influence of environmental conditions on protocellular membranes as the niche parameters would have directly influenced their composition and biophysical properties. Nonetheless, the evolutionary pathways involved in the transition from prebiological membranes to contemporary membranes are largely unknown. This review critically evaluates existing research on prebiotic membranes in terms of their probable origin, composition, energetics, function and evolution. Notably, we outline new approaches that can further our understanding about how prebiotic membranes might have evolved in response to relevant physicochemical parameters that would have acted as pertinent selection pressures on the early Earth.
* Sudha Rajamani [email protected] 1
Department of Biology, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune 411008, India
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Graphic Abstract
Keywords Prebiotic membranes · Molecular evolution · Early cellular life
Introduction Protocells, the earliest forms of cellular life, are hypothesized to be composed of three basic components: heritable polymers (presumably RNA), metabolic reactions and boundary compartments (Ruiz-Mirazo et al. 2014; Monnard and Walde 2015). Compartmentalization is considered crucial for the origins and evolution of cellular life as it separates internal components from the outside environment, helps in chemical enrichment and protects encapsulated material from both dilution and parasitic molecules (Segré et al. 2001; Chen and Walde 2010; Piedrafita et al. 2017). Importantly, compartmentalization introduces ‘selfness’ t
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