The inevitable journey to being
Open accessAbstract
Life is evolutionarily the most complex of the emergent symmetry-breaking, macroscopically organized dynamic structures in the Universe. Members of this cascading series of disequilibria-converting systems, or engines in Cottrell's terminology, become ever more complicated-more chemical and less physical-as each engine extracts, exploits and generates ever lower grades of energy and resources in the service of entropy generation. Each one of these engines emerges spontaneously from order created by a particular mother engine or engines, as the disequilibrated potential daughter is driven beyond a critical point. Exothermic serpentinization of ocean crust is life's mother engine. It drives alkaline hydrothermal convection and thereby the spontaneous production of precipitated submarine hydrothermal mounds. Here, the two chemical disequilibria directly causative in the emergence of life spontaneously arose across the mineral precipitate membranes separating the acidulous, nitrate-bearing CO2-rich, Hadean sea from the alkaline and CH4/H2-rich serpentinization-generated effluents. Essential redox gradients-involving hydrothermal CH4 and H2 as electron donors, CO2 and nitrate, nitrite, and ferric iron from the ambient ocean as acceptors-were imposed which functioned as the original 'carbon-fixing engine'. At the same time, a post-critical-point (milli)voltage pH potential (proton concentration gradient) drove the condensation of orthophosphate to produce a high energy currency: 't…
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The first biochemical pathways evolved based on already operating geochemical reactions.
“The similarities between naturally occurring minerals and carbon fixation enzymes are unlikely to be coincidences, and an emerging model is that the first biochemical pathways evolved based on already operating geochemical reactions (Cody and Scott, 2007; Nitschke et al., 2013; Russell et al., 2013, Sousa et al., 2013).”
From The Astrobiology Primer v2.0 (2016) · cites this paper as Russell et al., 2013, Sousa et al., 2013
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- Authors
- Russell, M. J., Nitschke, W., & Branscomb, E.
- Affiliations
- California Institute of Technology (US)
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR)
- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (US)
- Corresponding author
- Russell, Michael J.
- Venue
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
- Publisher
- The Royal Society
- Published
- 2013-07-19
- Volume
- 368
- Issue
- 1622
- Pages
- 20120254
- ISSN
- 0962-8436 (ISSN-L)
- 1471-2970
- PMC
- PMC3685457
- OpenAlex
- W2107106085
- Cited by
- 174
- References
- 22
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 16 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 22 · 2020: 11 · 2019: 30 · 2018: 14 · 2017: 17 · 2016: 15 · 2015: 7 · 2014: 8 · 2013: 7
- FWCI
- 6.65
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Origins and Evolution of Life
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Atmospheric Science › Earth Systems and Cosmic Evolution
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Paleontology › Paleontology and Stratigraphy of Fossils
- Keywords
- origin of life, serpentinization, alkaline hydrothermal vents, hydrothermal mounds, chemical nonequilibrium, redox gradients, CO2 fixation, proton gradient, pyrophosphate, entropy production, emergent complexity
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Carbon Dioxide, Energy Metabolism, Energy Transfer, Biological Evolution, Hot Temperature, Oceans and Seas, Seawater, Thermodynamics, Proton-Motive Force, Autotrophic Processes, Astronomical Phenomena, Geological Phenomena, Carbon Sequestration, Hydrothermal Vents
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