ArticleJournal of molecular evolution2009
Hydrothermal focusing of chemical and chemiosmotic energy, supported by delivery of catalytic Fe, Ni, Mo/W, Co, S and Se, forced life to emerge.
Article in Journal of molecular evolution, 2009. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 48 papers.
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Who cites it
48 citing papers in PubMed, 129 citations in OpenAlex.
- Nanometric and Hydrophobic Green Rust Minerals upon Exposure to Amino Acids and Nickel as Prerequisites for a Primitive Chemiosmosis.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Extremophiles and Extremophilic Behaviour-New Insights and Perspectives.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Unveiling the role of inorganic nanoparticles in Earth's biochemical evolution through electron transfer dynamics.iScience · 2024Review
- The Winding Road from Origin to Emergence (of Life).Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Inorganic Fe-O and Fe-S oxidoreductases: paradigms for prebiotic chemistry and the evolution of enzymatic activity in biology.Frontiers in chemistry · 2024Review
- Electron transport chains as a window into the earliest stages of evolution.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- A self-sustaining serpentinization mega-engine feeds the fougerite nanoengines implicated in the emergence of guided metabolism.Frontiers in microbiology · 2023Article
- A prebiotic basis for ATP as the universal energy currency.PLoS biology · 2022Article
- Spontaneous assembly of redox-active iron-sulfur clusters at low concentrations of cysteine.Nature communications · 2021Article
- TCA Cycle Replenishing Pathways in Photosynthetic Purple Non-Sulfur Bacteria Growing with Acetate.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Review
- The "Water Problem"(Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Review
- Six 'Must-Have' Minerals for Life's Emergence: Olivine, Pyrrhotite, Bridgmanite, Serpentine, Fougerite and Mackinawite.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020Article
- Prospecting for life.Interface focus · 2019Article
- Possible mechanisms of COInterface focus · 2019Article
- Promotion of protocell self-assembly from mixed amphiphiles at the origin of life.Nature ecology & evolution · 2019Article
- Life as a guide to prebiotic nucleotide synthesis.Nature communications · 2018Article
- Methane on Mars and Habitability: Challenges and Responses.Astrobiology · 2018Review
- Green Rust: The Simple Organizing 'Seed' of All Life?Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2018Review
- Acetyl Phosphate as a Primordial Energy Currency at the Origin of Life.Origins of life and evolution of the biosphere : the journal of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life · 2018Article
- Geoelectrochemical CO production: Implications for the autotrophic origin of life.Science advances · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Energised by the protonmotive force and with the intervention of inorganic catalysts, at base Life reacts hydrogen from a variety of sources with atmospheric carbon dioxide. It seems inescapable that life emerged to fulfil the same role (i.e., to hydrogenate CO(2)) on the early Earth, thus outcompeting the slow geochemical reduction to methane. Life would have done so where hydrothermal hydrogen interfaced a carbonic ocean through inorganic precipitate membranes. Thus we argue that the first carbon-fixing reaction was the molybdenum-dependent, proton-translocating formate hydrogenlyase system described by Andrews et al. (Microbiology 143:3633-3647, 1997), but driven in reverse. Alkaline on the inside and acidic and carbonic on the outside - a submarine chambered hydrothermal mound built above an alkaline hydrothermal spring of long duration - offered just the conditions for such a reverse reaction imposed by the ambient protonmotive force. Assisted by the same inorganic catalysts and potential energy stores that were to evolve into the active centres of enzymes supplied variously from ocean or hydrothermal system, the formate reaction enabled the rest of the acetyl coenzyme-A pathway to be followed exergonically, first to acetate, then separately to methane. Thus the two prokaryotic domains both emerged within the hydrothermal mound-the acetogens were the forerunners of the Bacteria and the methanogens were the forerunners of the Archaea.
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