The origin of life is shrouded in mystery, with few surviving clues, obscured by evolutionary competition. Previous reviews have touched on the complementary approaches of top-down and bottom-up synthetic biology to augment our understanding of living systems. Here we point out the synergies between these fields, especially between bottom-up synthetic biology and origin of life research. We explore recent progress made in artificial cell compartmentation in line with the crowded cell, its metabolism, as well as cycles of growth and division, and how those efforts are starting to be combined. Though the complexity of current life is among its most striking characteristics, none of life's essential features require it, and they are unlikely to have emerged thus complex from the beginning. Rather than recovering the one true origin lost in time, current research converges towards reproducing the emergence of minimal life, by teasing out how complexity and evolution may arise from a set of essential components.
翻译:生命的起源被神秘地笼罩,鲜有未存的线索,这些线索被进化竞争所掩盖。以前的审查触及了自上而下和自下而上的合成生物学的互补方法,以增进我们对生命系统的了解。这里我们指出这些领域之间的协同作用,特别是自下而上的合成生物学与生命研究起源之间的协同作用。我们探索了与拥挤的细胞、其新陈代谢以及成长和分裂的循环相匹配的人工细胞分隔最近取得的进展,以及这些努力如何开始结合在一起。尽管目前生活的复杂性是其最引人注目的特点之一,但生命的基本特征并不需要它,它们不可能从一开始就如此复杂。目前的研究不是要恢复在时间上失去的一个真正来源,而是要通过嘲笑一系列基本组成部分如何产生复杂性和进化,来重新创造最起码的生命。