ArticleNature communications2023
Methane formation driven by light and heat prior to the origin of life and beyond.
Article in Nature communications, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- Hydrogen bond reorganization activates water radical chemistry for COScience advances · 2026Article
- Abiotic Methane Production Driven by Soil Reactive Oxygen Species.Environmental science & technology · 2026Article
- Abyssal hydrothermal alteration drives the evolution from simple alkanes to prebiotic molecular complexity.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Gas detection-assisted deep-space and deep-sea exploration.Innovation (Cambridge (Mass.)) · 2025Article
- Review
- Uncovering dynamic transcriptional regulation of methanogenesis via single-cell imaging of archaeal gene expression.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Flexible iron: disorder in the ironome brings order to protein structure and function.Frontiers in molecular biosciences · 2025Article
- Methanogenesis in the presence of oxygenic photosynthetic bacteria may contribute to global methane cycle.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Methanol on the rocks: green rust transformation promotes the oxidation of methane.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2023Article
- Methane formation driven by light and heat prior to the origin of life and beyond.Nature communications · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, which likely enabled the evolution of life by keeping the early Earth warm. Here, we demonstrate routes towards abiotic methane and ethane formation under early-earth conditions from methylated sulfur and nitrogen compounds with prebiotic origin. These compounds are demethylated in Fenton reactions governed by ferrous iron and reactive oxygen species (ROS) produced by light and heat in aqueous environments. After the emergence of life, this phenomenon would have greatly intensified in the anoxic Archean by providing methylated sulfur and nitrogen substrates. This ROS-driven Fenton chemistry can occur delocalized from serpentinization across Earth's humid realm and thereby substantially differs from previously suggested methane formation routes that are spatially restricted. Here, we report that Fenton reactions driven by light and heat release methane and ethane and might have shaped the chemical evolution of the atmosphere prior to the origin of life and beyond.
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.