Shirt-Ediss, BenRuíz-Mirazo, KepaMavelli, FabioSolé Vicente, Ricard, 1962-2015-06-182015-06-182014Shirt-Ediss B, Ruíz-Mirazo K, Mavelli F, Solé RV. Modelling lipid competition dynamics in heterogeneous protocell populations. Scientific Reports. 2014;4:5675. DOI: 10.1038/srep056752045-2322http://hdl.handle.net/10230/23863Recent experimental work in the field of synthetic protocell biology has shown that prebiotic vesicles are able to ‘steal’ lipids from each other. This phenomenon is driven purely by asymmetries in the physical state or composition of the vesicle membranes, and, when lipid resource is limited, translates directly into competition amongst the vesicles. Such a scenario is interesting from an origins of life perspective because a rudimentary form of cell-level selection emerges. To sharpen intuition about possible mechanisms underlying this behaviour, experimental work must be complemented with theoretical modelling. The aim of this paper is to provide a coarse-grain mathematical model of protocell lipid competition. Our model is capable of reproducing, often quantitatively, results from core experimental papers that reported distinct types vesicle competition. Additionally, we make some predictions untested in the lab, and develop a general numerical method for quickly solving the equilibrium point of a model vesicle population.application/pdfeng© Nature Publishing Group. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder in order to reproduce the materialÀcids grassosLípidsVesícula biliarinfo:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep05675Computational modelsOrigin of lifeFatty acidsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess