Framing major prebiotic transitions as stages of protocell development: three challenges for origins-of-life research

Scholarly Works

• Barandiaran, X. E.; Etxeberria, A. Outonomy, the Very Idea. SpringerBriefs in Philosophy; Springer Nature Switzerland, 2025; pp 3–12. doi:10.1007/978-3-032-05501-9_1
• Shirt-Ediss, B.; Ferrero-Fernández, A.; De Martino, D.; Bich, L.; Moreno, A.; Ruiz-Mirazo, K. Modelling the prebiotic origins of regulation and agency in evolving protocell ecologies. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences 2025, 380, 20240287. doi:10.1098/rstb.2024.0287
• Shirt-Ediss, B.; Ferrero-Fernández, A.; De Martino, D.; Bich, L.; Moreno, A.; Ruiz-Mirazo, K. Modelling the prebiotic origins of regulation & agency in evolving protocell ecologies. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory 2024. doi:10.1101/2024.11.20.624505
• Ruiz-Mirazo, K.; Moreno, A. On the Evolutionary Development of Biological Organization from Complex Prebiotic Chemistry. History, Philosophy and Theory of the Life Sciences; Springer International Publishing, 2023; pp 187–218. doi:10.1007/978-3-031-38968-9_9
• Lauber, N.; Tichacek, O.; Narayanankutty, K.; De Martino, D.; Ruiz-Mirazo, K. Collective catalysis under spatial constraints: Phase separation and size-scaling effects on mass action kinetics. Physical review. E 2023, 108, 044410. doi:10.1103/physreve.108.044410
• Zanders, E. D. Rational ignorance in the search for extra-terrestrial life. New Astronomy Reviews 2023, 96, 101675. doi:10.1016/j.newar.2023.101675
• Fonin, A. V.; Antifeeva, I. A.; Kuznetsova, I. M.; Turoverov, K. K.; Zaslavsky, B. Y.; Kulkarni, P.; Uversky, V. N. Biological soft matter: intrinsically disordered proteins in liquid-liquid phase separation and biomolecular condensates. Essays in biochemistry 2022, 66, 831–847. doi:10.1042/ebc20220052
• Bizzarri, B. M.; Fanelli, A.; Botta, L.; De Angelis, M.; Palamara, A. T.; Nencioni, L.; Saladino, R. Aminomalononitrile inspired prebiotic chemistry as a novel multicomponent tool for the synthesis of imidazole and purine derivatives with anti-influenza A virus activity. RSC advances 2021, 11, 30020–30029. doi:10.1039/d1ra05240c
• Lauber, N.; Flamm, C.; Ruiz-Mirazo, K. "Minimal metabolism": A key concept to investigate the origins and nature of biological systems. BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology 2021, 43, 2100103. doi:10.1002/bies.202100103
• Lopez, A.; Chieffo, C.; Fiore, M. Abiotic Synthesis and Role of Amphiphiles in the Encapsulation Process in Life's Origin. Advances in Astrobiology and Biogeophysics; Springer International Publishing, 2021; pp 139–164. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-81039-9_6
• Colombet, J.; Fuster, M.; Billard, H.; Sime-Ngando, T. Femtoplankton: What’s New?. Viruses 2020, 12, 881. doi:10.3390/v12080881
• Ruiz-Mirazo, K.; Shirt-Ediss, B.; Escribano-Cabeza, M.; Moreno, A. The Construction of Biological ‘Inter-Identity’ as the Outcome of a Complex Process of Protocell Development in Prebiotic Evolution. Frontiers in physiology 2020, 11, 530. doi:10.3389/fphys.2020.00530
• Yoshizawa, T.; Nozawa, R.-S.; Jia, T. Z.; Saio, T.; Mori, E. Biological phase separation: cell biology meets biophysics. Biophysical reviews 2020, 12, 519–539. doi:10.1007/s12551-020-00680-x
• Martín, N. Y.; Valer, L.; Mansy, S. S. Toward long-lasting artificial cells that better mimic natural living cells. Emerging topics in life sciences 2019, 3, 597–607. doi:10.1042/etls20190026
• Solé, R. V. Cooperation in an RNA world. Nature ecology & evolution 2018, 2, 1527–1528. doi:10.1038/s41559-018-0649-5
• Bonfio, C.; Godino, E.; Corsini, M.; de Biani, F. F.; Guella, G.; Mansy, S. S. Prebiotic iron–sulfur peptide catalysts generate a pH gradient across model membranes of late protocells. Nature Catalysis 2018, 1, 616–623. doi:10.1038/s41929-018-0116-3

Explore citations to this article at