Figure 3.

Transition towards a functional protocell. A subset of complex prebiotic chemistry gave rise to protocells. Here, the process is envisaged to have proceeded in a fashion where nucleic acids were deeply integrated with peptides, and metabolic-like chemistry to generate a cell-like network from the beginning. That is, systems did not generally evolve separately and later merge. Iterative cycles of growth, fusion, and division ultimately led to competition between protocells sustained by some type of dissipative chemical (proto)metabolism.