ReviewLife (Basel, Switzerland)2018
Serpentinization: Connecting Geochemistry, Ancient Metabolism and Industrial Hydrogenation.
Review in Life (Basel, Switzerland), 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
32 citing papers in PubMed, 93 citations in OpenAlex.
- Proto-Biosignatures and Planetary Geochemical Metabolism: A Thermodynamic Screening Model of Prebiotic Geochemical Organization.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Primitive Basic Amino Acids Promote Mineral-Catalyzed Electrochemical Reduction of HThe journal of physical chemistry. C, Nanomaterials and interfaces · 2026Article
- Lithosyntrophy: Obligate syntrophy in a phosphite-oxidizing, methanogenic culture.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Origins of life: the possible and the actual.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Microfluidics for studying the deep underground biosphere: from applications to fundamentals.FEMS microbiology ecology · 2024Review
- Exploring the influence of atmospheric COApplied and environmental microbiology · 2024Article
- COAccounts of chemical research · 2024Article
- Microdroplets initiate organic-inorganic interactions and mass transfer in thermal hydrous geosystems.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Article
- Materials Genes of COJournal of the American Chemical Society · 2024Article
- Prebiotic synthesis of mineral-bearing microdroplet from inorganic carbon photoreduction at air-water interface.PNAS nexus · 2023Article
- Alkaline vents recreated in two dimensions to study pH gradients, precipitation morphology, and molecule accumulation.Science advances · 2023Article
- Ambient temperature CONature communications · 2023Article
- Spark of Life: Role of Electrotrophy in the Emergence of Life.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- The rocky road to organics needs drying.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Serpentinization as the source of energy, electrons, organics, catalysts, nutrients and pH gradients for the origin of LUCA and life.Frontiers in microbiology · 2023Review
- On the potential roles of phosphorus in the early evolution of energy metabolism.Frontiers in microbiology · 2023Review
- Hydrogen Drives Part of the Reverse Krebs Cycle under Metal or Meteorite Catalysis.Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English) · 2022Article
- Effects of Silica Modification (Mg, Al, Ca, Ti, and Zr) on Supported Cobalt Catalysts for HJournal of the American Chemical Society · 2022Article
- Role of geochemical protoenzymes (geozymes) in primordial metabolism: specific abiotic hydride transfer by metals to the biological redox cofactor NADThe FEBS journal · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
12 authors at 8 institutions in 5 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Rock⁻water⁻carbon interactions germane to serpentinization in hydrothermal vents have occurred for over 4 billion years, ever since there was liquid water on Earth. Serpentinization converts iron(II) containing minerals and water to magnetite (Fe₃O₄) plus H₂. The hydrogen can generate native metals such as awaruite (Ni₃Fe), a common serpentinization product. Awaruite catalyzes the synthesis of methane from H₂ and CO₂ under hydrothermal conditions. Native iron and nickel catalyze the synthesis of formate, methanol, acetate, and pyruvate-intermediates of the acetyl-CoA pathway, the most ancient pathway of CO₂ fixation. Carbon monoxide dehydrogenase (CODH) is central to the pathway and employs Ni⁰ in its catalytic mechanism. CODH has been conserved during 4 billion years of evolution as a relic of the natural CO₂-reducing catalyst at the onset of biochemistry. The carbide-containing active site of nitrogenase-the only enzyme on Earth that reduces N₂-is probably also a relic, a biological reconstruction of the naturally occurring inorganic catalyst that generated primordial organic nitrogen. Serpentinization generates Fe₃O₄ and H₂, the catalyst and reductant for industrial CO₂ hydrogenation and for N₂ reduction via the Haber⁻Bosch process. In both industrial processes, an Fe₃O₄ catalyst is matured via H₂-dependent reduction to generate Fe₅C₂ and Fe₂N respectively. Whether serpentinization entails similar catalyst maturation is not known. We suggest that at the onset of life, essential reactions leading to reduced carbon and reduced nitrogen occurred with catalysts that were synthesized during the serpentinization process, connecting the chemistry of life and Earth to industrial chemistry in unexpected ways.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.