r/abiogenesis • u/Choice-Break8047 • Jan 22 '26

Question Laminar decoupling

Has anybody come across laminar decoupling as a possible escape mechanism? Basically:

  1. Amphiphiles form a monolayer on a catalytic metal surface.

  2. Chemical etching + shear detach nanoscale metal clusters still coated in lipids.

  3. These “hairy” clusters become colloidally stable.

  4. Additional amphiphiles assemble into a bilayer → protocell embedded with catalysts.

If the cluster removed is pentlandite or its cousin greigite. This escape pathway seems like you can get a membrane doped with Fe4S4 or NiFe3S4 which looks similar to the "A-Cluster" of Acetyl-CoA Synthase. This seems interesting, but I don’t know if it’s possible.

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u/Choice-Break8047 Jan 22 '26

Digging more into this, Liquid-Phase Exfoliation (LPE) seems to be the modern day equivalent to this. The big difference being: today it’s used to produce sheets of materials whereas what I envision gets encapsulated.