Amino acids build collagen – and they could have built proto-cells on early Earth LAGUNA DESIGN/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Did life begin in a world of proteins? It’s a minority view among origin-of-life researchers but it just got a boost. Researchers have built model cells out of nothing but simple proteins, and those cells can host some of the crucial processes of life.
The small compartments within living cells are normally made from lipids, but in 2014, Stefan Schiller of the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg in Germany and his colleagues made them using proteins instead …
