Nucleotide-protocell interactions: A reciprocal relationship in prebiotically pertinent environments

Abstract

Compartmentalization is a primary attribute of cellular life, and hence, the emergence of compartments is considered a central step in the emergence of the earliest protocells.[1–3] Life is thought to have originated in chemically heterogeneous environments, where different chemical entities would have spontaneously interacted with each other, affecting each other’s properties.[4,5] Fatty acids and nucleotides are found abundantly in extant life and are also considered prebiotically relevant building blocks of protocells.[6] Due to their importance in both extant biology and in the context of the earliest protocells, understanding how the interactions between these two molecular classes in the prebiotic milieu could have affected each other’s properties, and, in turn, their evolution, would have been significant for processes that led to the emergence of life. The effect of lipids on the properties of nucleotides has been well characterized in previous literature. Under wet-dry cycles, lipids have been shown to facilitate organization of nucleotides,[7] which has been demonstrated to facilitate their oligomerization.