An extra layer of complexity

HCO HCO news & views relationships can also speed up evolution because the protocells were specifically made before. Or maybe we are again too through selective pressures on capture- designed to interact and to transfer cargo. inu fl enced by life as we know it. In other evasion mechanisms . To answer whether similar predatory words, perhaps all that is needed is more Using a system with only a few mechanisms could easily emerge from ingenious chemistry. ❐ molecular components, the team has shown primitive cells or to investigate the effect of how even rudimentary protocells can predator–prey interactions on the evolution Sheref S. Mansy is at the Centre for Integrative interact with each other and potentially of protocells and on the co-dependent Biology, University of Trento, via Sommarive 9, influence evolutionary trajectories. dynamics of the synthetic ecosystem, some 38123 Povo TN, Italy. Furthermore, the acquisition of foreign type of hereditary system needs to be e-mail: [email protected] DNA by the predator, as observed in this incorporated. The most obvious way would References case, is not unlike natural mechanisms seem to be to encode the components 1. Szostak J. W., Bartel D. P. & Luisi P. L. Nature of transformation, transduction and of the protocell within DNA, so that the 409, 387–390 (2001). conjugation, which often confers new transcription–translation of the genome 2. Qiao, Y., Li, M., Booth, R. & Mann, S. Nat. Chem. 9, 110–119 (2017). phenotypes on recipient cells that are of surviving protocells would lead to an 3. Attwater, J. & Holliger, P. Nat. Methods 11, 495–498 (2014). critical for survival (Fig. 1). However, it enrichment of daughter protocells with 4. Oparin A. I. e O Th rigin of Life New York (Macmillan, 1938) must be remembered that what has been selected phenotypes. The problem is that 5. Darimont C. T. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA shown in this synthetic...