Reciprocally-coupled Gating: Strange Loops in Bioenergetics, Genetics, and Catalysis

Carter, Charles W.; Wills, Peter R.

doi:10.20944/preprints202101.0057.v1

Cited by 7 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 99 publications

(144 reference statements)

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“…But of course the concatenations of life are not chemistry, or not just chemistry and we can take it from Darwin that "in the beginning was complexity" (Morfino and Thomas, 2017). For example, nanoengines and pumps are mandatory as processors to convert the available 'free' energy for (proto)biosynthesis through reciprocal gating mechanisms (Branscomb and Russell, 2013), implying the involvement of what Carter and Wills call, in their far-reaching paper, "Strange Loops in Bioenergetics, Genetics, and Catalysis" (Carter and Wills, 2021). How might such requirements for complex disequilibria converters be satisfied, not only for life's emergence, but also to guarantee its evolvable continuities?…”

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confidence: 99%

Order from Order: How Life Emerged from a Convection-driven Submarine Spring

Russell

2021

The 2021 Conference on Artificial Life

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All the constituents for life's emergence -CO 2 , H 2 , CH 4 N O − 2 , HP O 3− 4 , HS − , F e, N i, Co, Zn, M o -were focused at a submarine alkaline vent 4,4 billion years ago. And the redox and pH disequilibria across the vent precipitates -0.8 volts and 5 units -were also appropriate drivers. (There was no land and thus no "warm little ponds") (Russell, 2021). In these conditions carboxylic and amino acids, the active centers of the metalloenzymes and condensed phosphates with reactive short peptides as their nests, are known to form, and hydrazine, bases, and methyl alcohol are likely. So far, so apparently simple. But of course the concatenations of life are not chemistry, or not just chemistry and we can take it from Darwin that "in the beginning was complexity" (Morfino and Thomas, 2017). For example, nanoengines and pumps are mandatory as processors to convert the available 'free' energy for (proto)biosynthesis through reciprocal gating mechanisms (Branscomb and Russell, 2013), implying the involvement of what Carter and Wills call, in their far-reaching paper, "Strange Loops in Bioenergetics, Genetics, and Catalysis" (Carter and Wills, 2021). How might such requirements for complex disequilibria converters be satisfied, not only for life's emergence, but also to guarantee its evolvable continuities? Well, the main precipitate at the alkaline vents would have comprised billions upon billions of the 2D, double layered, variable valence, redox sensitive, physically flexible, solid electrolyte mineral, green rust or fougerite, a hydrated ferrous/ferric oxyhydroxide () dosed with a plethora of transition metals and capable of absorbing a variety of anions (Russell, 2018;Duval et al., 2019). These nanoengines have been shown to mediate the reactions just mentioned. These are remarkable and unexpected characteristics for a mineral known to have been the precursor of the Banded Iron Formations that are the resource for the first industrial revolution. But couldn't such an abundant and yet complex mineral -or a 'compendium' of such a mineral -suggest potential for emergent autonomous computing and thereby providing a code to offspring? (Harding et al., 2006;Bartlett and Beckett, 2019) Can we envision a convergence of endeavours cleaving the emergence of life research with aspects of Alife? (Cardoso et al., 2020)

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Order from Order: How Life Emerged from a Convection-driven Submarine Spring

Russell

2021

The 2021 Conference on Artificial Life

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The “Water Problem”(sic), the Illusory Pond and Life’s Submarine Emergence—A Review

Russell

2021

Life

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The assumption that there was a “water problem” at the emergence of life—that the Hadean Ocean was simply too wet and salty for life to have emerged in it—is here subjected to geological and experimental “reality checks”. The “warm little pond” that would take the place of the submarine alkaline vent theory (AVT), as recently extolled in the journal Nature, flies in the face of decades of geological, microbiological and evolutionary research and reasoning. To the present author, the evidence refuting the warm little pond scheme is overwhelming given the facts that (i) the early Earth was a water world, (ii) its all-enveloping ocean was never less than 4 km deep, (iii) there were no figurative “Icelands” or “Hawaiis”, nor even an “Ontong Java” then because (iv) the solidifying magma ocean beneath was still too mushy to support such salient loadings on the oceanic crust. In place of the supposed warm little pond, we offer a well-protected mineral mound precipitated at a submarine alkaline vent as life’s womb: in place of lipid membranes, we suggest peptides; we replace poisonous cyanide with ammonium and hydrazine; instead of deleterious radiation we have the appropriate life-giving redox and pH disequilibria; and in place of messy chemistry we offer the potential for life’s emergence from the simplest of geochemically available molecules and ions focused at a submarine alkaline vent in the Hadean—specifically within the nano-confined flexible and redox active interlayer walls of the mixed-valent double layer oxyhydroxide mineral, fougerite/green rust comprising much of that mound.

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Potassium at the Origins of Life: Did Biology Emerge from Biotite in Micaceous Clay?

Hansma¹

2022

Life

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Intracellular potassium concentrations, [K+], are high in all types of living cells, but the origins of this K+ are unknown. The simplest hypothesis is that life emerged in an environment that was high in K+. One such environment is the spaces between the sheets of the clay mineral mica. The best mica for life’s origins is the black mica, biotite, because it has a high content of Mg++ and because it has iron in various oxidation states. Life also has many of the characteristics of the environment between mica sheets, giving further support for the possibility that mica was the substrate on and within which life emerged. Here, a scenario for life’s origins is presented, in which the necessary processes and components for life arise in niches between mica sheets; vesicle membranes encapsulate these processes and components; the resulting vesicles fuse, forming protocells; and eventually, all of the necessary components and processes are encapsulated within individual cells, some of which survive to seed the early Earth with life. This paper presents three new foci for the hypothesis of life’s origins between mica sheets: (1) that potassium is essential for life’s origins on Earth; (2) that biotite mica has advantages over muscovite mica; and (3) that micaceous clay is a better environment than isolated mica for life’s origins.

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Reciprocally-coupled Gating: Strange Loops in Bioenergetics, Genetics, and Catalysis

Cited by 7 publications

References 99 publications

Order from Order: How Life Emerged from a Convection-driven Submarine Spring

Order from Order: How Life Emerged from a Convection-driven Submarine Spring

The “Water Problem”(sic), the Illusory Pond and Life’s Submarine Emergence—A Review

Potassium at the Origins of Life: Did Biology Emerge from Biotite in Micaceous Clay?

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