Prebiotic chemistry aims to explain how the biochemistry of life as we know it came to be.
Most efforts in this area have focused on provisioning compounds of importance to life by …

The fundamental roles that peptides and proteins play in today's biology makes it almost
indisputable that peptides were key players in the origin of life. Insofar as it is appropriate to …

INTRODUCTION Although hundreds of organic reactions have been validated under
consensus prebiotic conditions, we still have only a fragmentary understanding of how these …

Droplets abound in nature and technology. In general, they are multicomponent, and, when
out of equilibrium, have gradients in concentration, implying flow and mass transport …

Progress in development of biophysical analytic approaches has recently crossed paths with
macromolecule condensates in cells. These cell condensates, typically termed liquid-like …

Controlling the dynamics of mixed communities of cell-like entities (protocells) provides a
step toward the development of higher-order cytomimetic behaviors in artificial cell …

The hypothesis that prebiotic molecules were transformed into polymers that evolved into
proliferating molecular assemblages and eventually a primitive cell was first proposed about …

Here, we review the recent progress in the characterisation and utilisation of coacervates as
protocell models in origin of life studies. We provide evidence that coacervation could have …

Living cells harvest energy from their environments to drive the chemical processes that
enable life. We introduce a minimal system that operates at similar protein concentrations …

Research on the origin of life is highly heterogeneous. After a peculiar historical
development, it still includes strongly opposed views which potentially hinder progress. In …