The Birth of Living Cells
- How Membranes and Electron Transfer Made Life Possible
Long before life existed on Earth, lightning flashed through the sky, iron rusted, and fires burned. Life emerged when it began to contain and control these natural processes. This article explains how that happened.
Lightning, fire, and rust all involve the movement of electrons and the transfer of energy in a process called electron transfer. They do it in an uncontrolled fashion.
Electron transfer occurs when tiny particles called electrons move from one atom or molecule to another, releasing or storing energy in the process. We can think of electron transfer as a form of energy exchange.
Life depends on these same types of energy transfers, but on a much smaller scale. To perform them, life uses the Electron Transfer Chain.
To routinely perform and control the Electron Transfer Chain, life needed to build small, enclosed environments. It uses materials similar to the thin oil slicks we sometimes see floating on water. Phospholipids, fatty molecules, spontaneously self-assemble when in contact with water.
Soap bubbles provide another example of this type of molecule spontaneously self-assembling, and mimic the membrane walls of living cells.
Once life learned how to organize phospholipids into membranes, it could control the energy of the Electron Transfer Chain, giving cells the ability to reproduce, grow, and repair themselves.
Albert Wilking
July 17, 2026
2607
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