ArticleNature ecology & evolution2017
Sulfate radicals enable a non-enzymatic Krebs cycle precursor.
Article in Nature ecology & evolution, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 49 papers.
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Who cites it
49 citing papers in PubMed, 122 citations in OpenAlex.
- Article
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- Metallic molybdenum sulfide catalyses protometabolic carbon dioxide reaction networks under extreme conditions.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Nonliving respiration: Another breath in the soil?Science advances · 2025Article
- Impact of Salinity Stress on Antioxidant Enzyme Activity, Histopathology, and Gene Expression in the Hepatopancreas of the Oriental River Prawn,Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Abiotic origin of the citric acid cycle intermediates.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Prebiotic formation of thioesters via cyclic anhydrides as a key step in the emergence of metabolism.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Nonenzymatic Hydration of Phosphoenolpyruvate: General Conditions for Hydration in Protometabolism by Searching Across Pathways.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2025Article
- Biological significance of sperm-independent calcium oscillations in immature oocytes of mice.microPublication biology · 2025Article
- Cofactor maturase NifEN: A prototype ancient nitrogenase?Science advances · 2024Article
- Autocatalytic Selection as a Driver for the Origin of Life.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Effect ofInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2023Article
- Methane formation driven by light and heat prior to the origin of life and beyond.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Prebiotic Synthesis of Aspartate Using Life's Metabolism as a Guide.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Metabolic homeostasis and growth in abiotic cells.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Self-Similar Patterns from Abiotic Decarboxylation Metabolism through Chemically Oscillating Reactions: A Prebiotic Model for the Origin of Life.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Metals in Prebiotic Catalysis: A Possible Evolutionary Pathway for the Emergence of Metalloproteins.ACS omega · 2023Review
- Regulation and function of the mammalian tricarboxylic acid cycle.The Journal of biological chemistry · 2023Review
- Hydrogen Drives Part of the Reverse Krebs Cycle under Metal or Meteorite Catalysis.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2022Article
- The limits of metabolic heredity in protocells.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
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4 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
The evolutionary origins of the tricarboxylic acid cycle (TCA), or Krebs cycle, are so far unclear. Despite a few years ago, the existence of a simple non-enzymatic Krebs-cycle catalyst has been dismissed 'as an appeal to magic', citrate and other intermediates have meanwhile been discovered on a carbonaceous meteorite and do interconvert non-enzymatically. To identify the non-enzymatic Krebs cycle catalyst, we used combinatorial, quantitative high-throughput metabolomics to systematically screen iron and sulfate reaction milieus that orient on Archean sediment constituents. TCA cycle intermediates are found stable in water and in the presence of most iron and sulfate species, including simple iron-sulfate minerals. However, we report that TCA intermediates undergo 24 interconversion reactions in the presence of sulfate radicals that form from peroxydisulfate. The non-enzymatic reactions critically cover a topology as present in the Krebs cycle, the glyoxylate shunt and the succinic semialdehyde pathways. Assembled in a chemical network, the reactions achieve more than ninety percent carbon recovery. Our results show that a non-enzymatic precursor for the Krebs cycle is biologically sensible, efficient, and forms spontaneously in the presence of sulfate radicals.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.