Abstract
BackgroundAll life, including cells and artificial protocells, must integrate diverse molecules into a single unit in order to reproduce. Despite expected pressure to evolve a simple system with the fastest replication speed, the mechanism by which the use of a great variety of components, and the coexistence of diverse cell-types with different compositions are achieved is as yet unknown.ResultsHere we show that coexistence of such diverse compositions and cell-types is the result of competitions for a variety of limited resources. We find that a transition to diversity occurs both in chemical compositions and in protocell types, as the resource supply is decreased, when the maximum inflow and consumption of resources are balanced.ConclusionsOur results indicate that a simple physical principle of competition for a variety of limiting resources can be a strong driving force to diversify intracellular dynamics of a catalytic reaction network and to develop diverse protocell types in a primitive stage of life.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13322-015-0010-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
All life, including cells and artificial protocells, must integrate diverse molecules into a single unit in order to reproduce
When multiple resources are competed for, do protocells diversify into distinct types specialized for the use of different resources, and is coexistence of diverse cell types possible? Here, we show through numerical simulation of a model of interacting protocells consisting of hypercycle reaction networks that such a transition to increased diversity occurs when available resources are limited
When the resources are supplied sufficiently fast, a recursively growing state is established with a few molecular species, where the composition is robust against noise and perturbations by the division process
Summary
We show that coexistence of such diverse compositions and cell-types is the result of competitions for a variety of limited resources. We find that a transition to diversity occurs both in chemical compositions and in protocell types, as the resource supply is decreased, when the maximum inflow and consumption of resources are balanced
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