[alexholehouse]

This is one in a number of papers exploring how biological phase separation/condensation may have provided favourable microenvironments for early life development.

For a nice primer on what biological phase separation is, see this (non-paywalled) general audience article from earlier this year in Nature (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03070-2).

Some other work on phase separation as a means for primordial evolution and biochemistry includes a paper from Christine Keating in 2012 (WAY WAY ahead of the curve) [1], elegant work by Frank Jülicher [2], and more recently a nice paper from Keating and Phil Bevilacqua [3].

These papers (IMO) tie rather nicely into some theoretical predictions on self-organization from Jeremy England [4].

[1] Keating, C.D. (2012). Aqueous phase separation as a possible route to compartmentalization of biological molecules. Acc. Chem. Res. 45, 2114–2124.

[2] Zwicker, D., Seyboldt, R., Weber, C.A., Hyman, A.A., and Jülicher, F. (2016). Growth and division of active droplets provides a model for protocells. Nat. Phys. 13, 408.

[3] Poudyal, R.R., Pir Cakmak, F., Keating, C.D., and Bevilacqua, P.C. (2018). Physical Principles and Extant Biology Reveal Roles for RNA-Containing Membraneless Compartments in Origins of Life Chemistry. Biochemistry 57, 2509–2519.

[4] England, J.L. (2013). Statistical physics of self-replication. J. Chem. Phys. 139, 121923.

[mxwsn]

Phase separation really seems to be a hot topic in biology beyond early life development too, extending at least to the field of gene regulation.

A Phase Separation Model for Transcriptional Control. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28340338

which already has 70 citations despite being published just 14 months ago.