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How could a nonliving droplet grow and divide?
The model describes droplets made from a chemical called B, suspended in a solution containing a lower-energy chemical called A. Within a droplet, B spontaneously decomposes into A, which then dissolves into the surrounding liquid. Outside the droplet, A can be converted back into B, but that reverse reaction needs an external energy source. The regenerated B is incorporated into droplets.
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Possible energy sources in an early-Earth setting include chemical fuel, radiation, or temperature gradients such as those proposed around hydrothermal vents. These are examples of conditions the model could accommodate, not evidence that this exact chemical cycle operated on ancient Earth.
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From steady growth to shape instability
At moderate supersaturation, the modeled droplets grow to a stable size. At higher supersaturation, growth can destabilize their shape. Small surface irregularities grow rather than smooth out, the droplet elongates, and it eventually separates into two or three smaller daughter droplets. Those droplets can then grow and divide again.
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Frank Jülicher, a biophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, compared the instability to a growing mountain: “If you grow a little mountain somewhere because more material arrives, the tip of the mountain receives more precipitation that the valley,” The analogy captures the proposed feedback: a bump can accumulate material faster than a flatter region, amplifying the unevenness.
What the model does—and does not—show
The droplets in the model are not living cells. Their growth and division are predictions of a mathematical model under specified chemical and physical conditions, not an observed biological life cycle. A report on the work said the model had not yet been tested when it was published and that the researchers were discussing possible tests with experimentalists. The available account does not establish whether later experiments validated the proposal.
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Even if a system of this kind could divide, division alone would not establish that it was alive or explain the origin of life. The model addresses a possible route to compartment growth and division; the report does not show that it provides inheritance or a complete process for producing life.
Could RNA be part of the droplets?
The researchers discussed RNA-carrying droplets as a possible candidate system, but the idea depends on finding conditions that allow RNA to be copied and its components to be repolymerized. Jülicher described the challenge this way: “What corresponds to the chemical reaction is polymerisation of RNA and degradation of RNA into some components. One has then to provide conditions from which RNA can be re-polymerised.” The report presents this as a conditional proposal, not a demonstrated prebiotic replication system.
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How plausible is a hydrothermal-vent setting?
William Martin, an evolutionary biologist at Heinrich Heine University of Düsseldorf, questioned which observed biological system the model emulates: “It’s not clear to me what real biological system based on observations from nature that this might be emulating,” He also said that a relevant droplet system in an organic-rich hydrothermal-vent setting is imaginable. His remarks are a qualified critique and possibility, respectively—not evidence that the mechanism did or did not occur at vents.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Why the proposal matters
The model gives researchers a specific mechanism to investigate: an energy-driven chemical cycle could sustain droplet growth, while sufficiently strong growth could make a droplet’s shape unstable and cause division. That is a potentially useful piece of an origin-of-life explanation, but it is not by itself an account of how life began. The underlying paper is D. Zwicker et al., “Growth and Division of Active Droplets Provides a Model for Protocells,” Nature Physics (2016), DOI 10.1038/nphys3984. A contemporary account of the proposal appeared in Chemistry World.
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