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Journal ArticleDOI

Synthesis of phospholipids and membranes in prebiotic conditions

William R. Hargreaves, +2 more
- 03 Mar 1977 - 
- Vol. 266, Iss: 5597, pp 78-80
TLDR
The abiotic synthesis of various lipids, including membranogenic phospholipids, are reported here, which are obvious candidates for prebiotic membrane components.
Abstract
IT is generally agreed that stable membranes were prerequisite to the assembly of the earliest self-replicating systems1–4. Phospholipids, which are ubiquitous in biological membranes and which self-assemble in aqueous environments into stable lipid bilayers and vesicles4, are obvious candidates for prebiotic membrane components. We report here the abiotic synthesis of various lipids, including membranogenic phospholipids.

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Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI

Theory of self-assembly of lipid bilayers and vesicles

TL;DR: A unified theory is developed that explains the formation of bilayers and vesicles and accounts quantitatively for many of their physical properties: properties including vesicle size distributions and bilayer elasticity emerge from a unified theory that links thermodynamics, interaction free energy, and molecular geometry.
Journal ArticleDOI

Prebiotic systems chemistry: new perspectives for the origins of life.

TL;DR: This paper presents a probabilistic analysis of the stationary phase replacement of Na6(CO3)(SO4)/ Na2SO4 in horseshoe clusters and shows clear trends in the number of stationary phases and in the stationary phases of Na2CO3.
Journal ArticleDOI

The lipid world.

TL;DR: A Lipid World model for the origin of life is proposed, which combines the potential chemical activities of lipids and other amphiphiles, with their capacity to undergospontaneous self-organization into supramolecular structures such as micelles and bilayers.
Journal ArticleDOI

Liposomes from ionic, single-chain amphiphiles.

TL;DR: Membrane permeability to various solutes was determined in part by a new technique which utilized phase-contract microscopy; when impermeable vesciles exclude added solutes such as sucrose, refractive index differences are created between vesicle contents and surrounding medium, so that the vesicles appear bright in the phase microscope.
Book

The Emergence of Life: From Chemical Origins to Synthetic Biology

TL;DR: The conceptual framework of the research on the origin of life on Earth includes approaches to the definitions of life, self-organization, autopoiesis, and the logic of cellular life.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI

A rapid method of total lipid extraction and purification.

TL;DR: The lipid decomposition studies in frozen fish have led to the development of a simple and rapid method for the extraction and purification of lipids from biological materials that has been applied to fish muscle and may easily be adapted to use with other tissues.
Journal ArticleDOI

Complete separation of lipid classes on a single thin-layer plate.

C.P. Freeman, +1 more
TL;DR: A double-development procedure employing first a polar and then a nonpolar solvent system is described for the complete separation by thin-layer chromatography of the main lipid classes encountered in natural lipids.
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