Murat Güneş

Replicating molecules enclosed themselves in lipid containers at some stage of the RNA World

This note is currently a stub.

References:

Bray, Wetware (2009), p. 152

Natural selection works because organisms better at producing offspring multiply at the expense of their close relatives. So our population of RNA molecules needs something equivalent to an organism-some way to partition sets or cohorts of molecules. Cohorts must be sufficiently isolated and distinct that they can keep to themselves, self-ishly, any improvements they achieve.

Which brings us to membranes. All present-day cells are enclosed in thin sheets of lipid and protein. These membranes segregate the molecules responsible for the replication of the cell (as well as its growth, its energy production, and so on) from everything outside, including other cells. The utility of this arrangement is inescapably powerful. It seems unavoidable that at some stage in the RNA world, systems of replicating molecules must have become enclosed in spherical containers composed in large part of lipid.