At some point during the evolution of life on earth, the inorganic matter became organic, non -vibrant matter became alive. How this happened is one of the greatest mysteries of mankind. Today, scientists are working to develop synthetic cells that mimic the living cells, hoping to reveal evidence that will help answer the question: How did life be started on Earth?
While there is no definition of life, three elements are repeated throughout biology:
- Separation – an obstacle that separates the interior of a cell from the environment.
- Metabolism – Creating and splitting molecules for the transfer of cellular function. and
- Option – a process in which some molecules are favored in relation to others.
In the past, researchers have focused on apartment, but not metabolism. However, this cycle of building and splitting the molecules is a critical aspect of the way living cells respond to environmental stimuli, reproduce and evolve.
Now researchers from the University of California San Diego have designed a system that composes cell membranes and incorporates metabolic activity. Their work appears in Nature chemistry and appears on the cover of June 2025.
Cells that do not have a metabolic network are glued – they are unable to remodel, grow or divide. Life today is greatly evolving, but we want to understand if metabolism can occur in very simple chemical systems before the development of the most complex biology. “
Neal Devaraj, Murray Goodman resulted in a chair in chemistry and biochemistry in UC San Diego and the main researcher on paper
Lipids are fat compounds that play a decisive role in many cellular functions. In living cells, lipid membranes serve as obstacles, separating cells from the external environment. Lipid membranes are dynamic, capable of remodeling in response to cellular requirements.
As a critical step in understanding the way living cells evolved, Devaraj’s laboratory designed a system where lipids can not only form membranes, but through metabolism, they can also break them. The system they created was abiotic, which means that only non -lively matter was used. This is important to understand how life came about in Prebiotic Earth, when there was only non -vital matter.
“We try to answer the fundamental question: What are the few systems that have the properties of life?” Alessandro Fracassi, a postdoctoral researcher at the Devaraj workshop and the first writer on paper, said.
The chemical cycle he created uses a chemical fuel to activate fatty acids. Fatty acids then mate with lusters, which produce phospholipids. These phospholipids spontaneously form the membranes, but the absence of fuel, break down and return to the ingredients of fatty acids and lusters. The cycle begins again.
Now that they have shown that they can create an artificial cell membrane, they want to continue adding layers of complexity until they create something that has much more than the properties we associate with “life”.
“We know a lot about live cells and from what is made,” Fracassi said. “But if you have placed all the separate ingredients, we do not really understand how to put them together to make the cell function as it does. We try to recreate a primitive but functional cell, one mattress at a time.”
In addition to eliminating the way life can begin in an abiotic environment, artificial cell growth can have a real impact. The tradition of drugs, biomodows, environmental rehabilitation, biomimetic sensors are all potential in the coming decades as we continue to deepen our understanding of how life came on earth.
“We may not see such developments for 10 or 20 years,” Devaraj noted. “But we have to do the job today, because we still have so much to learn.”
Authors: Alessandro Fracassi, Andrés Seoane, Hong-Guen Lee, Alexander Harjung and Neal K. Devaraj (all UC San Diego). and Roberto J. Brea (Universidade da Coruña (Spain)).
This project was funded by the National Foundation of Sciences (Che-2304664).
