JTW's Evolutionary Origins - Author: Wachtershauser, Gunter

Conditions For Chemoautotrophic Energy Source

[pp. 89-90]

There are six stringent conditions required of a potential energy source for primordial carbon fixation in a chemoautotrophic origins of life scenario.

• The energy source must be a reducing agent.
  
  
• The reducing potential must be sufficient to accomplish all metabolic reductions and for driving an overall metabolism.
  
  
• The energy flow must proceed directly and linearly from reducing agent to carbon dioxide.
  
  
• The energy flow must be somewhat inhibited in the abscence of a metabolism.
  
  
• The energy source must be operative within the organism.
  
  
• The energy source must be geochemically plausible.

• Wachtershauser, Gunter
  • Groundworks for an Evolutionary Biochemistry: The Iron-Sulphur World
  • Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology: Vol. 58, No. 2, pp.85-202
  • 1992
  • [Pubmed]

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