  The growth, form, and division of prebiotic vesicles, membraneous bags of
fluid of varying components and shapes is hypothesized to have served as the
substrate for the origin of life. The dynamics of these out-of-equilibrium
structures is controlled by physicochemical processes that include the
intercalation of amphiphiles into the membrane, fluid flow across the membrane,
and elastic deformations of the membrane. To understand prebiotic vesicular
forms and their dynamics, we construct a minimal model that couples membrane
growth, deformation, and fluid permeation, ultimately couched in terms of two
dimensionless parameters that characterize the relative rate of membrane growth
and the membrane permeability. Numerical simulations show that our model
captures the morphological diversity seen in extant precursor mimics of
cellular life, and might provide simple guidelines for the synthesis of these
complex shapes from simple ingredients.
