Energy gradients as potential drivers of pre-cellular chemical organization

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that environmental energy gradients can spontaneously organize chemical reactions and localization in prebiotic conditions without the need for membranes, offering insights into early life emergence.

Contribution

The paper introduces a reaction-diffusion model showing how energy gradients can induce chemical organization and localization in the absence of membranes, relevant to origins of life research.

Findings

Strong gradients lead to reactant accumulation and reaction localization.

Spatial organization emerges when gradient-driven transport surpasses diffusion.

Stable chemical states form under hydrothermal vent-like conditions.

Abstract

The onset of life is often framed around membrane bound compartments and encoded metabolism, leaving unresolved how spatial organization arose before stable boundaries. In this context, environmental gradients are usually treated as boundary conditions rather than variables structuring chemical dynamics. We ask whether spatial localization and functional coupling can emerge under realistic environmental gradients in the absence of membranes, proposing that spatial variations in energy availability act as organizing variables that bias transport and reaction. We introduce a reaction diffusion model in which interacting chemical species evolve within an externally imposed activity landscape defined by coupled gradients in pH, redox potential and temperature, integrating diffusion, gradient driven drift and position dependent reaction kinetics. We performed simulations across a range of gradient strengths representative of hydrothermal vent like conditions. Our results suggest that sufficiently strong gradients induce spontaneous accumulation of reactants, spatial alignment of reaction maxima and the emergence of stable, confined chemical states. Localization arises above a threshold at which gradient driven transport overcomes diffusive and degradative losses. We conclude that spatially structured energy landscapes can support organized chemical dynamics without predefined compartments, providing a mechanism for coupling and persistence in continuous media. Potential applications include experimental platforms for studying prebiotic chemistry, microfluidic systems with controlled gradients and the design of chemically responsive materials.