Thermally induced habitat for the emergence of life - enrichment of phosphorus, divalent salts and compact oligomer folds.

ORAL

Abstract

The early Earth 4 billion years ago was a scarce place for the emergence of life. After the formation of the oceans, it was most likely difficult to extract the essential ionic building blocks of life, such as phosphate or salts, from the existing geomaterial in sufficiently high concentrations and suitable mixing ratios. We show how ubiquitous heat fluxes through rock fractures implement a physical solution to this problem: Thermal convection and thermophoresis together are able to separate calcium from phosphorus and thus use ubiquitous but otherwise inert apatite as a phosphate source. Furthermore, the mixing ratio of different salts is modified according to their thermophoretic properties, providing a suitable non-equilibrium environment for the first prebiotic reactions.

*Funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) – Project-ID 364653263 – TRR 235 (CRC235). Funding by the Volkswagen Initiative 'Life? – A Fresh Scientific Approach to the Basic Principles of Life', from the Simons Foundation and from Germany's Excellence Strategy EXC-2094-390783311 is gratefully acknowledged. We are grateful for funding by the European Research Council (ERC starting grant, RiboLife) under 802000 and the MaxSynBio consortium, which is jointly funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany and the Max Planck Society. We wish to acknowledge the support of ERC ADV 2018 Grant 834225 (EAVESDROP). We thank for financial support from ERC-2017-ADG from the European Research Council. The work is supported by the Center for Nanoscience Munich (CeNS).

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Publication: Matreux, T., Le Vay, K., Schmid, A., Aikkila, P., Belohlavek, L., Çalışkanoğlu, A.Z., Salibi, E., Kühnlein, A., Springsklee, C., Scheu, B., Dingwell, D.B., Braun, D., Mutschler, H., Mast, C.B. (2021) "Heat flows in rock cracks naturally optimize salt compositions for ribozymes." Nat. Chem., 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-021-00772-5
Keil, L.M.R., Möller, F.M., Kieß, M., Kudella, P.W., Mast, C.B. (2017) "Proton gradients and pH oscillations emerge from heat flow at the microscale." Nat. Commun. 8,1897. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-02065-3

Presenters

  • Christof B Mast

    • Systems Biophysics / Fakultät f. Physik

Authors

  • Christof B Mast

    • Systems Biophysics / Fakultät f. Physik

  • Dieter Braun

    • LMU
    • Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich

  • Thomas Matruex

    • LMU

  • Paula Aikkila

    • LMU

  • Bettina Scheu

    • LMU

  • Don B Dingwell

    • LMU

  • Kris Le Vay

    • TU Dortmund

  • Hannes Mutschler

    • TU Dortmund