Environmental boundary conditions for the origin of life converge to an organo-sulfur metabolism.

ABSTRACT: It has been suggested that a deep memory of early life is hidden in the architecture of metabolic networks, whose reactions could have been catalyzed by small molecules or minerals before genetically encoded enzymes. A major challenge in unravelling these early steps is assessing the plausibility of a connected, thermodynamically consistent proto-metabolism under different geochemical conditions, which are still surrounded by high uncertainty. Here we combine network-based algorithms with physico-chemical constraints on chemical reaction networks to systematically show how different combinations of parameters (temperature, pH, redox potential and availability of molecular precursors) could have affected the evolution of a proto-metabolism. Our analysis of possible trajectories indicates th

SUBMITTER: Goldford JE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6881557 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature