{
  "abstract": "Periodic mechanical forcing of the early Earth, from lunar tides (period of about 10 h) and radiogenic geysers (about 15 min) to von Kármán vortex shedding (about 1 s), may have loaded fatty-acid protocell membranes on time scales comparable to their relaxation times. We present a minimal model in which the tension of a parent vesicle, relaxing with time constant τ under rectified periodic forcing, releases one nano-vesicle at each upward crossing of a budding threshold. The shed nano-vesicles deplete the free fatty-acid pool of the surrounding niche through a non-linear sink bounded by the critical micelle concentration (CMC). The depletion equation has an exact solution between shedding events, and numerical integration with illustrative parameters shows that the discrete, tension-gated release produces a staircase of quasi-steady monomer levels that the pool follows towards the CMC. We discuss a matching window fτ = O(1) as a possible paleophysical selection criterion and, as a hypothesis not tested here, an analogy with vesicle-mediated nutrient competition in tumour niches.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 1,
  "authors": [
    {
      "name": "Peter Mikuláš",
      "orcid": "0009-0009-6827-4976"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/9pjzrm3snmgtk.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.26434/chemrxiv.15009389/v1",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "9pjzrm3snmgtk",
  "issns": [],
  "landing_url": "https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.15009389/v1",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY",
  "licence_label": "CC BY",
  "licence_source": "journal",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "openalex",
      "3103|Origins and Evolution of Life"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7213498013",
  "pdf_url": "https://chemrxiv.org/doi/pdf/10.26434/chemrxiv.15009389/v1",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-09-23",
  "publisher": "American Chemical Society (ACS)",
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/9pjzrm3snmgtk.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-10-30T12:17:21Z",
      "native_id": "10.26434/chemrxiv.15009389",
      "source": "chemrxiv",
      "url": "https://chemrxiv.org/doi/full/10.26434/chemrxiv.15009389/v1"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "astronomy",
      "origin": "openalex:3103|Origins and Evolution of Life",
      "subfield": "general"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Fractal Colonization of Prebiotic Niches: Mechanical Budding of Nano-vesicles and Kinetic Resource Depletion as an Oncological Atavism",
  "title_text": "Fractal Colonization of Prebiotic Niches: Mechanical Budding of Nano-vesicles and Kinetic Resource Depletion as an Oncological Atavism",
  "type": "preprint",
  "updated_at": "2026-10-30T12:17:21Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/9pjzrm3snmgtk",
  "venue": "ChemRxiv",
  "versions": []
}