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from the It's-the-end^W-beginning-of-the-world-as-we-know-it? dept.
Researchers have demonstrated that an enzyme-free metabolic pathway using sulfate radicals can mirror the Krebs cycle:
A set of biochemical processes crucial to cellular life on Earth could have originated in chemical reactions taking place on the early Earth four billion years ago, believes a group of scientists from the Francis Crick Institute and the University of Cambridge. The researchers have demonstrated a network of chemical reactions in the lab which mimic the important Krebs cycle present in living organisms today. In a study published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, they say it could explain an important step in how life developed on Earth.
[...] One central metabolic pathway learned by every A-level biology student is the Krebs cycle. But how did this essential set of chemical reactions, each step catalyzed by an enzyme, first arise? Each step in the cycle is not enough by itself. Life needs a sequence of these reactions, and it would have needed it before biological enzymes were around: Amino acids, the molecular components of enzymes, are made from products of the Krebs cycle.
The research group from the Francis Crick Institute and the University of Cambridge say their demonstration offers an answer. They have shown an enzyme-free metabolic pathway that mirrors the Krebs cycle. It is sparked by particles called sulphate radicals under conditions similar to those on Earth four billion years ago. Senior author Dr Markus Ralser of the Francis Crick Institute and University of Cambridge explains: "This non-enzymatic precursor of the Krebs cycle that we have demonstrated forms spontaneously, is biologically sensible and efficient. It could have helped ignite life four billion years ago."
Found at ScienceDaily.
Sulfate radicals enable a non-enzymatic Krebs cycle precursor (open, DOI: 10.1038/s41559-017-0083) (DX)
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday March 15 2017, @03:21PM (1 child)
I'll provide an alternative surprise interpretation.
In the old days people believed in a lot of stupid stuff, like clearly baby humans only come from mom (not storks, back then before the concept of "nerd" was invented by a certain group of people in the 1970s scientists used to get lots of action from groupies) but lower animals like worms could come from empty dirt abiogenesis was what it was called. Another weird belief in the old days was vitalism where living being organic chemistry has a soul such that artificial processed stuff is chemically different than biologically created stuff. I'm not that old, this is just history of science stuff, things that well educated people believed in say 1800 or so.
Anyway one way those beliefs died out was it turns out that abiogenesis doesn't really work unless your lab technique was sloppy, such as not pasteurizing with enough heat or not checking your experimental samples with a microscope to make sure nothing is already small and alive in there.
So part of the surprise is if someone ran these weird sulfate experiments on sterile dirt two hundred years ago the confusing chemistry results might have changed science quite a bit. Its interesting, like trivia.
(Score: 2) by marcello_dl on Thursday March 16 2017, @12:40PM
The problem is that abiogenesis did not bother the religious guys or the unbelievers back then. Why should people infer necessary consequences on doctrine now? Wait until you reproduced a self aware guy, who is not distinguishable from any soulless narcissist here, at least.