This $502,983 Project Grant awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) aims to study the formation and reproduction of membrane-enclosed vesicles (protocells) and their potential to exhibit a primitive form of Darwinian evolution. The project has three main goals: (1) use catalytic minerals to synthesize and polymerize organosulfur species into amphiphilic molecules, (2) investigate the self-assembly of these amphiphiles into vesicle compartments and develop methods to study their composition, and (3) assess whether such vesicles can display generational heredity and undergo natural selection under varying environmental conditions. The research will leverage custom-made microfluidic setups to simulate the out-of-equilibrium conditions found in energy-rich geochemical settings. This interdisciplinary effort at the crossroads of chemical biology, biophysics, and evolutionary biology seeks to advance understanding of how the first cells emerged on the early Earth. No sub-awards are planned under this grant, which has an award date of March 1, 2025 and an ultimate completion date of February 29, 2028.
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