Departamento de Bioquímica y Biología Molecular I, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain.
PLoS One. 2012;7(6):e39480. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0039480. Epub 2012 Jun 27.
In this work we attempt to find out the extent to which realistic prebiotic compartments, such as fatty acid vesicles, would constrain the chemical network dynamics that could have sustained a minimal form of metabolism. We combine experimental and simulation results to establish the conditions under which a reaction network with a catalytically closed organization (more specifically, an (M,R-system) would overcome the potential problem of self-suffocation that arises from the limited accessibility of nutrients to its internal reaction domain. The relationship between the permeability of the membrane, the lifetime of the key catalysts and their efficiency (reaction rate enhancement) turns out to be critical. In particular, we show how permeability values constrain the characteristic time scale of the bounded protometabolic processes. From this concrete and illustrative example we finally extend the discussion to a wider evolutionary context.
在这项工作中，我们试图找出脂肪酸囊泡等现实的前生物隔室在多大程度上会限制可能支持最小形式代谢的化学网络动力学。我们结合实验和模拟结果来确定具有催化封闭组织的反应网络（更具体地说，（M,R 系统））将克服由于营养物质对其内部反应域的有限可及性而产生的自窒息潜在问题的条件。膜的渗透性、关键催化剂的寿命及其效率（反应速率增强）之间的关系是关键。特别是，我们展示了渗透率值如何限制有界原代谢过程的特征时间尺度。最后，我们从这个具体而有启发性的例子将讨论扩展到更广泛的进化背景。
