Nick Lane

You know, there's lots of steps along here, but this is the basic kind of starting point for all of biosynthesis in biochemistry today.

As I say, you know, Krebs cycle intermediates are short chain carboxylic acids.

A fatty acid is a long chain.

Yeah.

you know, your 10, 12, 15 carbons in the chain instead of four or five.

And they will spontaneously, not just alone usually, but if you've got other long chain hydrocarbons mixed up with them, then you will form a bilayer membrane spontaneously.

And we've done this in the lab.

And it's pretty robust to, you know, you can make these things at 70 degrees, 90 degrees centigrade across a range of pH from around about pH 7 up to about pH 12.

And in the presence of ions like calcium and magnesium and other salts and so on.

And you make a vesicle with a bilayer membrane around it, which is basically the same as a cell membrane.

Yeah.

they're amazingly dynamic things.

They're always fusing with each other and breaking apart, kind of fissioning, separating into two or three.

And, you know, they're very, very dynamic things under a microscope.

I hate that as an idea, but go on.

Yes, I mean, one thing, you know, a cell...

is effectively, it's reduced inside, which is to say it's got electrons inside, and outside it's relatively oxidized, and outside it's rather, you pump all these protons out, it's acidic outside, it's alkaline inside, it's reduced inside.

That's like the Earth.

The Earth is, all the electrons are in the iron in the core and the mantle of the Earth, relatively alkaline inside, that's why there are alkaline fluids in these vents.

The outside is relatively oxidized.