ReviewACS earth & space chemistry2023
Plausible Sources of Membrane-Forming Fatty Acids on the Early Earth: A Review of the Literature and an Estimation of Amounts.
Review in ACS earth & space chemistry, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 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
19 citing papers in PubMed.
- Hydroxy acid conjugation to lipids increases structural and hydrolytic stability.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Prebiotically Plausible Vesicle Populations Can Respond to Selection for Greater Turbidity via Emergent Cooperative Dynamics.Langmuir : the ACS journal of surfaces and colloids · 2026Article
- Increasing the Compositional Heterogeneity of Single-Chain Amphiphile Membranes Supported by Coacervate Cores Alters Stability and Properties of the Hybrid Protocells.Langmuir : the ACS journal of surfaces and colloids · 2026Article
- Can nanozymes achieve more than enzymes?Nature reviews. Materials · 2026Article
- Growth of fatty acid vesicles coupled with amino acid sequences of peptides toward evolvable protocells.Communications chemistry · 2026Article
- Chemical Routes to Primitive Membranes: Prebiotic Lipid Formation at the Origin of Life.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Review
- Organocatalyzed bottom-up formation of protocells.Nature communications · 2026Article
- The Origin of Life and Cellular Systems: A Continuum from Prebiotic Chemistry to Biodiversity.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Long-chain alkanes preserved in a Martian mudstone.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Chemically Driven Division of Protocells by Membrane Budding.Journal of the American Chemical Society · 2024Article
- The astrochemical evolutionary traits of phospholipid membrane homochirality.Nature reviews. Chemistry · 2024Review
- Information Gradient among Nucleotide Sequences of Essential RNAs from an Evolutionary Perspective.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Article
- Natural soda lakes provide compatible conditions for RNA and membrane function that could have enabled the origin of life.PNAS nexus · 2024Article
- Evidence of Heritability in Prebiotically Realistic Membrane-Bound Systems.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- RETRACTED ARTICLE: Generation of long-chain fatty acids by hydrogen-driven bicarbonate reduction in ancient alkaline hydrothermal vents.Communications earth & environment · 2024Article
- Optimization and Enhancement of the Peroxidase-like Activity of Hemin in Aqueous Solutions of Sodium Dodecylsulfate.ACS omega · 2023Article
- On the origin of life: an RNA-focused synthesis and narrative.RNA (New York, N.Y.) · 2023Article
- Growth of Prebiotically Plausible Fatty Acid Vesicles Proceeds in the Presence of Prebiotic Amino Acids, Dipeptides, Sugars, and Nucleic Acid Components.Langmuir : the ACS journal of surfaces and colloids · 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
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The first cells were plausibly bounded by membranes assembled from fatty acids with at least 8 carbons. Although the presence of fatty acids on the early Earth is widely assumed within the astrobiology community, there is no consensus regarding their origin and abundance. In this Review, we highlight three possible sources of fatty acids: (1) delivery by carbonaceous meteorites, (2) synthesis on metals delivered by impactors, and (3) electrochemical synthesis by spark discharges. We also discuss fatty acid synthesis by UV or particle irradiation, gas-phase ion-molecule reactions, and aqueous redox reactions. We compare estimates for the total mass of fatty acids supplied to Earth by each source during the Hadean eon after an extremely massive asteroid impact that would have reset Earth's fatty acid inventory. We find that synthesis on iron-rich surfaces derived from the massive impactor in contact with an impact-generated reducing atmosphere could have contributed ∼10
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.