Conditional iron and pH-dependent activity of a non-enzymatic glycolysis and pentose phosphate pathway.

ABSTRACT: Little is known about the evolutionary origins of metabolism. However, key biochemical reactions of glycolysis and the pentose phosphate pathway (PPP), ancient metabolic pathways central to the metabolic network, have non-enzymatic pendants that occur in a prebiotically plausible reaction milieu reconstituted to contain Archean sediment metal components. These non-enzymatic reactions could have given rise to the origin of glycolysis and the PPP during early evolution. Using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and high-content metabolomics that allowed us to measure several thousand reaction mixtures, we experimentally address the chemical logic of a metabolism-like network constituted from these non-enzymatic reactions. Fe(II), the dominant transition metal component of Archean oceanic

SUBMITTER: Keller MA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4730858 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature