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Editorial
. 2025 Aug 13:14:e108470.
doi: 10.7554/eLife.108470.

Mimicking early life-forms in the lab

Maarten Lubbers  1 , Dennis Claessen  1
Affiliations
Editorial

Mimicking early life-forms in the lab

Maarten Lubbers et al. Elife. .

Abstract

Studying the growth of bacteria without cell walls in an artificial environment can shed new light on the proliferation of primitive life-forms billions of years ago.

Keywords: archaean eon; biofilms; evolutionary biology; microfossil morphology; microfossils; origin of life; protocells.

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Conflict of interest statement

ML, DC No competing interests declared

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. Using bacteria without cell walls to mimic the proliferation of early life-forms.
(A, B) Kanaparthi et al. engineered a bacterium called Exiguobacterium strain-Molly (EM) into a wall-deficient state called EM-P, and found that these cells proliferated by forming internal daughter cells (A, left), or by forming a string of external cells (A, right). The cells then formed biofilms (C), which subsequently transformed into honeycomb-shaped mats (D), which resemble some of the structures seen in microfossils.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment on

  • doi: 10.7554/eLife.98637

References

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