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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2017 Jun 1.
Published in final edited form as: Biosystems. 2016 Mar 9;144:8–17. doi: 10.1016/j.biosystems.2016.03.003

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Oil (hydrocarbon) droplets in water as a potential substrate for coenzyme-like molecules. (A) Emulsion of oil/petroleum in water, from http://petrowiki.org/Oil_emulsions. (B) Scenario of coenzyme self-reproduction on oil droplets: a coenzyme molecule makes the surface hydrophilic via oxidation of hydrocarbons; this change facilitates synthesis of coenzymes from precursors on the surface. Hydrophilic oil droplets easily divide and may coalesce with new oil droplets (i.e., capture new oil resource).