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Protocells are primitive cellular entities that are thought to have emerged during the dawn of life on Earth. Their membranes are considered to be made up of mixtures of single chain amphiphiles, such as fatty acids and their derivatives, moieties which would have been part of the complex prebiotic chemical landscape. In addition to their composition, the physico-chemical properties of these prebiological membranes would have been significantly affected and regulated by the physical environment that they were present in. In this talk, I will discuss what we have gleaned from studying the properties of two different membrane systems, under prebiotically pertinent selection pressures such as stability under varying pH and Mg2+ ion concentrations, to name some. Our results demonstrate how these pertinent environmental constraints would have acted as important prebiotic selection pressures to shape the evolution of prebiological membranes. Our results also illustrate that hetergeneous membrane systems are more stable and robust to multiple selection pressures, thereby making them more suitable for supporting protocellular life. |