ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2020
A carbonate-rich lake solution to the phosphate problem of the origin of life.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 73 papers.
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73 citing papers in PubMed.
- Concurrent Phosphite Oxidation and Adenosine Phosphorylation Under Prebiotic Evaporative Conditions.Journal of molecular evolution · 2026Article
- Clay and organic matter interaction in the biogeochemical genesis of alkaline soda-lake water.Biologia futura · 2026Article
- From searching for extraterrestrial biosignatures to exploring the origins of life: A prebiotic chemistry perspective.Fundamental research · 2026Review
- Complex and Messy Prebiotic Chemistry: Obstacles and Opportunities for an RNA World.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Protometabolically Generated NADH Mediates Material Properties of Aqueous Dispersions to Coacervate Microdroplets.Biomacromolecules · 2026Article
- Various inorganic phosphorus species in prebiotic Earth and extraterrestrial settings.Discover chemistry · 2026Review
- Microbial community patterns in two geochemically contrasting zones within the alkaline lake Bagno dell'Acqua (Pantelleria Island, Italy).Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Prebiotic Roles of Formaldehyde as an Activating Agent and a Building Block in Solid-State Peptide Modification.ACS bio & med chem Au · 2025Article
- Magmatic immiscibility provides phosphate for prebiotic chemistry.Science advances · 2025Article
- A scope of prebiotic neat reaction conditions and the mechanism of urea-assisted phosphorylations of alcohols.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Planetary sources of bio-essential nutrients on a prebiotic world.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Significant impacts of metal ions from ancient oceans on nucleoside phosphorylation.BMC chemistry · 2025Article
- Article
- Preferential survival of prebiotic metallopeptides in the presence of ultraviolet light.Chemical science · 2025Article
- Phosphorylation of nucleosides by P-N bond species generated from prebiotic reduced phosphorus sources.Communications chemistry · 2025Article
- Amino acids catalyse RNA formation under ambient alkaline conditions.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Large closed-basin lakes sustainably supplied phosphate during the origins of life.Science advances · 2025Article
- Silicon isotopic signatures of granitoids support increased weathering of subaerial land 3.7 billion years ago.Communications earth & environment · 2025Article
- On the possibility of carbon-free heteropolymers on Venus: a computational astrobiology study.QRB discovery · 2025Article
- Microbial communities of selected regions of the Deep Springs Lake aquifer system.Frontiers in microbiology · 2025Article
13 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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2 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Phosphate is central to the origin of life because it is a key component of nucleotides in genetic molecules, phospholipid cell membranes, and energy transfer molecules such as adenosine triphosphate. To incorporate phosphate into biomolecules, prebiotic experiments commonly use molar phosphate concentrations to overcome phosphate's poor reactivity with organics in water. However, phosphate is generally limited to micromolar levels in the environment because it precipitates with calcium as low-solubility apatite minerals. This disparity between laboratory conditions and environmental constraints is an enigma known as "the phosphate problem." Here we show that carbonate-rich lakes are a marked exception to phosphate-poor natural waters. In principle, modern carbonate-rich lakes could accumulate up to ∼0.1 molal phosphate under steady-state conditions of evaporation and stream inflow because calcium is sequestered into carbonate minerals. This prevents the loss of dissolved phosphate to apatite precipitation. Even higher phosphate concentrations (>1 molal) can form during evaporation in the absence of inflows. On the prebiotic Earth, carbonate-rich lakes were likely abundant and phosphate-rich relative to the present day because of the lack of microbial phosphate sinks and enhanced chemical weathering of phosphate minerals under relatively CO
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