JTW's Evolutionary Origins - Author: Wachtershauser, Gunter

Gunter Wachtershauser - Introduction

In 1988 and subsequently, Gunter Wachtershauser proposed the "Iron-Sulphur World". He postulated that the geochemical setting for the origin of life was a local anaerobic aqueous environment with elevated temperatures and pressures in which the oxidative formation of pyrite from hydrogen sulfide and iron(II) sulfide form a redox couple with, and thereby drives, the first auto-catalytic carbon fixation metabolism and it's subsequent evolution. He proposed that the first living biological organisms were two-dimensional surface metabolists involved in a reductive citric acid cycle (RCC). This cycle is essential the oxidative Krebs Cycle run in reverse. Instead of breaking down complex biomolecules into water and carbon dioxide, as in the Krebs Cycle, the RCC builds up organic molecules from scratch, i.e. from simple inorganic carbon and hydrogen sources.

Hydrothermal vent systems were proposed as a geochemically plausible source of CO, CO₂, COS, H₂S, FeS, and other simple CHNOPS molecules, as well as a variety of transition metal sulfides and phosphates retained as components of the mineral surface of the vents themselves.

• 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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