Reproducing lipid micelles permit early Darwinian evolution

The origin of life has puzzled science and philosophy for thousands of years. While the prevailing scientific narrative is of an ‘RNA world’ or ‘polymers first’ approach, Prof Doron Lancet’s group of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, present an alternative, describing a ‘lipid world’ scenario as a plausible origin for life, in which lipid micelles (simpler structures than cell-like vesicles) could have been nanoscopic protocell precursors. Core to the theory is that these micelles could exhibit catalysis and compositional self-reproduction, passing information through the mixture of their lipid components rather than through a genetic sequence.