Simple case of prebiotic evolution: vesicle populations can respond to selection for greater turbidity via emergent cooperative dynamics

Adaptive evolution has long been hypothesized to be possible in the absence of genetic molecules, but experimental evidence remains lacking. Fatty acid vesicles represent an intriguing model to study the emergence of prebiotic evolution, since they can spontaneously grow and divide and have been hypothesized to be capable of non-genetic inheritance. In this study we conducted multiple experiments to test whether vesicle populations can respond to artificial selection for greater turbidity and, if so, whether that response can be tied to an inheritance-like mechanism. We prepared 96 independent vesicle populations, incubated them for 24 hours and then selected half the populations to propagate into the next generation. The populations to propagate were picked either randomly, representing drift controls, or were the populations with the greatest turbidity, representing selection. Population propagation involved resuspension, transfer into fresh buffer, feeding with an amphiphile stock, a..., , # Simple case of prebiotic evolution: vesicle populations can respond to selection for greater turbidity via emergent cooperative dynamics

Dataset DOI: [10.5061/dryad.fbg79cp99](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.fbg79cp99)

## Description of the data and file structure

Raw data for

**Simple case of prebiotic evolution: vesicle populations can respond to selection for greater turbidity via emergent cooperative dynamics**

Tymofii Sokolskyi, David Baum

Acronyms for experiment types used in this dataset are the same as in the manuscript:

FR = fed + resuspended

UR = unfed + resuspended

UU = unfed + unresuspended

FU = fed + unresuspended

FR-30min, UU-30min, FR-90min, FR-5hr correspond to experiments done with 30 min, 90 min and 5 hr generation duration respectively. If generation duration is unspecified in the filename it was 24 hrs.

* \_log files are for selection experiments with drift and selection lineages. Specific files are: FR1_log.xlsx, FR2_log.xlsx, FR3_log.xlsx, FU1_log.xlsx,..., ,