Protocells are the simplest compartments that likely existed on early Earth and formed abiotically; it has been proposed that modern cells evolved from protocells. There are several different protocell models that perform various prebiotically relevant functions, including lipid or polymer vesicles, polyelectrolyte microcapsules, colloidosomes, proteinosomes, supercritical carbon dioxide, and coacervates. Among these, coacervates are generated from LLPS where a macromolecule-rich condensed liquid phase separates from the aqueous solution. Coacervates can be composed of synthetic polyelectrolytes, polysaccharides, nucleic acids, peptides, proteins, or (poly)nucleotides, some of which were certainly available on early Earth. For this reason, and because coacervates can exhibit "lifelike properties" similar to those of living cells (Fig. ), such as movement, growth, and division, analyte uptake and concentration, information processing, adaptation, and proliferation, coacervates have been proposed as protocell models as early as 100 years ago. However, coacervates cannot mimic all characteristics of a cell as they lack a membrane, which may lead to rapid coalescence, instability, or inability to selectively uptake nutrients and remove waste while retaining useful products. Nevertheless, LLPS still allows regulation of internal biochemical reactions by concentrating specific prebiotic reactants, while also being the foundation for emergence of complex functions, such as specific double-stranded DNA binding or scaffolding of higher order structures such as liquid crystals. This suggests the potential for membraneless LLPS compartments to be promising protocell candidates, perhaps before the advent of membrane-bound systems, and eventually leading to the emergence of cells. Figure . Cellular life-like properties. Reproduced with permission from under a Creative Commons License.