Wavy membranes and the growth rate of a planar chemical garden: Enhanced diffusion and bioenergetics
Open accessAbstract
Significance: In hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, precipitation membranes grow at the boundary between seawater and mineral-rich liquid flowing out of the vent. Such membranes are increasingly viewed as having played a vital role in the emergence of life on Earth, but their bioenergetics is unclear. Here, we present a laboratory and theoretical study that quantifies ionic transport across an analog membrane. We demonstrate that flow over a growing, wavy-membrane topography enhances diffusive transport across its surface. This enhanced diffusion helps to explain the “leakiness” present in early protocells from chemical gardens. More generally, the work is of interest in fluid-flow control via surface topography, and the opposite: predesigned flow perturbations to shape membrane formation, in biology, chemistry, and physics.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Many minerals precipitated in and around hydrothermal systems would have included ambient water confined and immobilized through hydrogen bonding, or within pores.
“Many of the minerals precipitated in and around hydrothermal systems would also have included ambient water that was confined and somewhat immobilized through hydrogen bonding, e.g. between 'brucite' layers (e.g. in [Fe 4 2+ Fe 2 3+ (OH) 12 ][CO 3 ] •3H 2 O, green rust; Russell 2018), or within pores in the mineral precipitates, e.g.silica gel or adjacent hydrothermal sediments (Ding et al. 2016;”
From The Emergence of Life (2019) · cites this paper as Ding et al. 2016
Cites
A Serpentinite-Hosted Ecosystem: The Lost City Hydrothermal Field
Kelley, D. S., Karson, J. A., Früh-Green, G. L., Yoerger, D. R., Shank, T. M., Butterfield, D. A., Hayes, J. M., Schrenk, M. O., Olson, E. J., Proskurowski, G., et al. (2005) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1102556 · Cited by 1,288 · see citing works
The origin of membrane bioenergetics
Lane, N., & Martin, W. F. (2012) · Cell · doi:10.1016/j.cell.2012.11.050 · Cited by 452 · see citing works
The Drive to Life on Wet and Icy Worlds
Russell, M. J., Barge, L. M., Bhartia, R., Bocanegra, D., Bracher, P. J., Branscomb, E., Kidd, R., McGlynn, S., Meier, D. H., Nitschke, W., et al. (2014) · Astrobiology · doi:10.1089/ast.2013.1110 · Cited by 288 · cited 1× · see citing works
“Such membranes are increasingly viewed as having played a vital role in the emergence of life on Earth over 4 billion years ago (4, 5).”
BackgroundSousa, F. L., Thiergart, T., Landan, G., Nelson-Sathi, S., Pereira, I. A. C., Allen, J. F., Lane, N., & Martin, W. F. (2013) · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rstb.2013.0088 · Cited by 286 · cited 2× · see citing works
“Prebiotic chemistry needed to sustain disequilibrium with its surroundings to possess pH and reduction potential by maintaining proton and redox gradients (34).”
BackgroundA Bioenergetic Basis for Membrane Divergence in Archaea and Bacteria
Sojo, V., Pomiankowski, A., & Lane, N. (2014) · PLoS Biology · doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001926 · Cited by 154 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Redox and pH gradients drive amino acid synthesis in iron oxyhydroxide mineral systems
Barge, L. M., Flores, E., Baum, M. M., VanderVelde, D. G., & Russell, M. J. (2019) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1812098116 · Cited by 203 · see citing works
Camprubí, E., de Leeuw, J. W., House, C. H., Raulin, F., Russell, M. J., Spang, A., Tirumalai, M. R., & Westall, F. (2019) · Space Science Reviews · doi:10.1007/s11214-019-0624-8 · Cited by 84 · see citing works
Steep pH gradients and directed colloid transport in a microfluidic alkaline hydrothermal pore
Möller, F. M., Kriegel, F., Kieß, M., Sojo, V., & Braun, D. (2017) · Angewandte Chemie International Edition · doi:10.1002/anie.201610781 · Cited by 78 · see citing works
On the differing growth mechanisms of black-smoker and Lost City-type hydrothermal vents
Cardoso, S. S. S., & Cartwright, J. H. E. (2017) · Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences · doi:10.1098/rspa.2017.0387 · Cited by 34 · see citing works
Self-citation
- Authors
- Ding, Y., Batista, B., Steinbock, O., Cartwright, J. H. E., & Cardoso, S. S. S.
- Affiliations
- University of Cambridge (GB)
- Florida State University (US)
- Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (ES)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2016-08-02
- Volume
- 113
- Issue
- 33
- Pages
- 9182-9186
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC4995959
- OpenAlex
- W2500413479
- Cited by
- 61
- References
- 5
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 9 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 2
- FWCI
- 2.87
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
- DIGITAL.CSIC (Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- arXiv (Cornell University)
- Funders
- Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation | Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq)
- National Science Foundation (1609495)
- Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (FIS2013-48444-C2-2-P)
- Leverhulme Trust (RPG-2015-002)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Origins and Evolution of Life
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Geochemistry and Petrology › Geochemistry and Elemental Analysis
- Physical Sciences › Materials Science › Biomaterials › Calcium Carbonate Crystallization and Inhibition
- Keywords
- chemical gardens, ion transport, manganese hydroxide, gel layer, enhanced diffusion, microreactors, hydrothermal vents, Hadean Earth, bioenergetics, origin of life, metal ion transport, hydroxide ion
- MeSH terms
- Diffusion, Energy Metabolism, Membranes, Artificial, Lab-On-A-Chip Devices, Hydrothermal Vents
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
