Theoretical origin of life: hydrogen energy (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, December 15, 2021, 19:25 (864 days ago) @ David Turell

If there is available energy, the metabolic processes miraculously appear:

https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/biology/what-fuelled-the-origins-of-life/

"Now, researchers at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU), Germany, say they’ve found the smoking gun. The secret ingredient that fuelled the origins of life is the modern era’s cleanest, greenest energy carrier: hydrogen gas (H2).

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"The team identified 402 metabolic reactions that have been virtually unchanged since the origins of life some four billion years ago, and which all occur among some of the present day’s simplest life forms – bacteria and archaea. By looking at these extraordinarily well-conserved reactions, PhD researcher and lead author on the study Jessica Wimmer was able to piece together LUCA’s metabolic activity – peering through the veil at the functioning of primordial life billions of years in the past.

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"To find the source of energy in these primordial metabolic reactions, the team calculated the amount of free energy – also known as Gibbs energy – released in each reaction.

"What they found was startling. LUCA didn’t need UV light, meteorite impacts, volcanic eruptions or radioactivity to spark the earliest earthly metabolism. Instead, the energy for LUCA’s reactions came from its own metabolism. What that means is that LUCA’s metabolic reactions liberated its own energy, and this probably occurred in an environment much like modern-day, submarine hydrothermal vents.

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"Hydrogen is crucial in these reactions.

“Without hydrogen, nothing happens at all, because hydrogen is required to get carbon from CO2 incorporated into metabolism in the first place,” says Wimmer.

"So the energy needed to ignite that initial spark of life is really quite simple.

“'We need no sunlight, no meteorites, no UV light, just H2 and CO2, plus some ammonia and salts,” Wimmer says."

Comment: the height of stupidity. How did those 402 processes appear at first? By design? By accident? That an element is present doesn't make it the cause. As with oxygen available for the new Cambrian species its presence allows the process, but is not the cause!!