Protocells were likely the first forms of life to take shape on Earth, but they lacked many of the modern conveniences found in today’s cells—most critically, a cell membrane. Scientists have long ...

Man-made balls of genetic material and membranes can pull off a decent impression of primitive cells. These squishy spheres known as “protocells” can accept chemical deliveries to sustain a division ...

“Water is life.” It sounds philosophical, but likely quite literal for our home planet, with the first signs going back billions of years. You’ve heard that DNA is the building block of today’s life, ...

Unfortunately for scientists, there is no videotape of the universe’s history that they can rewind to watch how life got started on Earth. Instead, they must recapitulate life in the lab to find ...

Researchers have prepared synthetic protocells coated in red blood cell fragments for use as nitric oxide generating bio-bots within blood vessels. An international team comprising researchers from ...

A simple mechanism could underlie the growth and self-replication of protocells - putative ancestors of modern living cells - suggests a study publishing September 3 in Biophysical Journal. Protocells ...

New research by the University of Oslo provides evidence that the "protocells" that formed around 3.8 billion years ago, before bacteria and single-celled organisms, could have had specialized ...

Synthetic protocells can be made to move toward and away from chemical signals, an important step for the development of new drug-delivery systems that could target specific locations in the body. By ...

Microscopy image showing green, dark blue and blue-labelled synthetic protocells used for DNA communication and computing. The protocells contain DNA logic gates and are trapped between pairs of small ...