A Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) research team investigating how the earliest stages of life might have developed has discovered a way the first living cells could have met a key challenge—maintaining a constant internal environment,a process called homeostasis, even when external conditions change. In a report receiving advance online publication in Nature Chemistry, and the investigators recount finding that the dilution of a simple cell's internal contents that takes location when the cell grows increases the activity of an internal enzyme,maintaining activity at a constant level relative to cellular volume.
Source: phys.org