The prebiotic emergence of protocells is an important part of any origins of life scenario. Although fatty-acid-based vesicles are well studied, how they transitioned to phospholipid vesicles is uncertain. Herein, we show that cyclic-phospholipids formed from fatty acids and glycerol could have played a role by generating a heterogeneous library of vesicles with diverse morphologies and tolerance to a range of metal ions, temperature, and pH. The cyclic phosphate moiety facilitates the natural emergence of vesicles composed of diacyl-phospholipids to become part of the chemical evolutionary process. Competing emergent properties of the various systems (facilitated by additives) could have led to an early preference of the sn-1,2-acyl-substitution on the glycerol backbone coincidental with extant biology. Thus, cyclic-phospholipids could have played a significant role not only in early prebiotic protocellular chemistry but also in facilitating the chemical evolution of protocells from the structurally simple to the functionally more complex.

原始细胞的益生元出现是任何生命起源场景的重要组成部分。尽管基于脂肪酸的囊泡已得到充分研究，但它们如何转变为磷脂囊泡尚不确定。在此，我们表明，由脂肪酸和甘油形成的环状磷脂可以通过生成具有不同形态和对一系列金属离子、温度和 pH 的耐受性的异质囊泡库来发挥作用。环状磷酸酯部分促进由二酰基磷脂组成的囊泡的自然出现，成为化学进化过程的一部分。各种系统的竞争性新兴特性（由添加剂促进）可能导致甘油主链上的 sn-1,2-酰基取代的早期偏好，这与现有生物学一致。因此，环状磷脂不仅在早期生命前的原细胞化学中发挥了重要作用，而且在促进原始细胞从结构简单到功能更复杂的化学进化方面发挥了重要作用。