The origin of cells: a symbiosis between genes, catalysts, and membranes

Abstract

The gap between early molecular evolution and the origin of the first cell may have been bridged by a photoheterotrophic obcell, consisting of genes and ribosomes attached to the outer surface of a phospholipid vesicle containing a light-driven proton pump and a proton-driven pyrophosphate synthase. I argue that the obcell was the substratum for the origin of DNA replication; DNA segregation by the growth and division of the peptidoglycan murein; periplasmic solute-binding proteins; bioenergetics, including the F0F1 proton-driven ATP synthase; active transport of calcium; and facilitated diffusion of nutrients across membranes, and that it played the major role in the replacement of ribozymes by protein catalysts. Curved growth of the peptidoglycan and a mutation causing septum formation produced the first true cell. Evolution of porins, sodium extrusion and potassium import, conversion of the facilitated diffusion proteins to active pumps, and the evolution of intermediary metabolism, carbon and nitrogen fixation, and of substrate level phosphorylation, completed the origin of the first negibacterial eubacterium, from which all other cells evolved, and from which they have inherited most of their major catalytic properties--with the notable exceptions of reverse transcriptase, RNA splicing, and methanogenesis, all of which I believe evolved very much later.