Piedrafita, GabrielRuiz-Mirazo, KepaMonnard, Pierre AlainCornish-Bowden, Athel J.Montero, Francisco J.2023-06-202023-06-2020121932-6203e39480https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/44496In this work we attempt to find out the extent to which realistic prebiotic compartments, such as fatty acid vesicles, would constrain the chemical network dynamics that could have sustained a minimal form of metabolism. We combine experimental and simulation results to establish the conditions under which a reaction network with a catalytically closed organization (more specifically, an (M,R)-system) would overcome the potential problem of self-suffocation that arises from the limited accessibility of nutrients to its internal reaction domain. The elationship between the permeability of the membrane, the lifetime of the key catalysts and their efficiency (reaction rate enhancement) turns out to be critical. In particular, we show how permeability values constrain the characteristic time scale of the bounded protometabolic processes. From this concrete and illustrative example we finally extend the discussion to a wider evolutionary context.engjournal articlehttp://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0039480open access577.257:51EMTREE drug terms: glycerol oleatelauric acidoleic acidprebiotic agent EMTREE medical terms: articlecatalystenzyme kineticsfatty acid analysislipid vesiclemembrane permeabilitymetabolismpolymerizationprotein lipid interactionprotometabolismsecretory vesiclesteady statethermodynamics MeSH: Biological EvolutionCell MembraneComputer SimulationModelsBiologicalPermeabilityBiologíaBiología molecular (Biología)Biomatemáticas24 Ciencias de la Vida2415 Biología Molecular2404 Biomatemáticas