"ONE of the great transitions in the history of life took shape when naked genetic material clothed itself and protocells were born. But try to recreate this moment and you quickly hit a stumbling block. A lipid-coated protocell doesn't have the machinery to easily divide in two when the genetic material replicates.
Now Kunihiko Kaneko and Atsushi Kamimura, both of the University of Tokyo, Japan, have devised a model which may solve the problem. They took inspiration from living things, in which DNA and RNA code for proteins, and proteins catalyse replication of the genetic material. They suggest a similar self-perpetuating system in which a cluster of two types of molecules catalyse replication for one another and demonstrate a rudimentary form of cell division."
