METAL IONS AND THE ROUTE TO LIFE (HB 2025)

Volume 28, entitled Metal Ions and the Route to Life, of the series Metal Ions in Life Sciences, advocates for the prime importance of the recognition of metal ions and metal-bearing minerals in the transition from inanimate matter to first life on our planet. Unlike the relatively unreactive organic molecules, the traditional protagonists of orthodox origin-of-life hypotheses, metals and minerals are natural catalysts, abundantly present in the majority of settings on the early Earth considered as conducive to bringing forth life. In these palaeogeochemical settings, they may have catalyzed the anabolic conversions of inorganic precursor molecules into organics and may have converted redox disequilibria between environmental reductants and oxidants into the ordering, i.e. the lowering of entropy, of first living entities. Far-fetched? Yet, this is precisely what metal ions do in life today!

An unlikely coalition of biology (biochemistry and bioenergetics) and physics (thermodynamics and condensed matter physics) is growingly questioning the plausibility of the orthodox hypotheses while putting metal ions and minerals centre-stage in their scenarios. In this volume, 29 internationally renowned experts from fields as diverse as microbiology, biochemistry, astrobiology, electrochemistry, ecology, mineralogy, geology and geochemistry shine light from their individual angles on this topic, bringing home metal ions’ primordial importance to extant life, presenting minerals with tantalizing reactivities appearing as look-alikes of life’s processes and sketching out plausible, metal-ion-based scenarios for life’s emergence on planet Earth. Metal Ions and the Route to Life provides the empirical groundwork to interested researchers and the general public for revisiting their preconceived ideas about the origin of life and for appreciating the absolute indispensability of metal ions in life – now just as at its beginnings!

Wolfgang Nitschke obtained his Diploma in Physics and his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Regensburg (Germany). He then worked as a post-doctoral fellow (on grants from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the CEA and EMBO) with A. W. (Bill) Rutherford, Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique (Saclay, France) and with Pierre Joliot, Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique (Paris/France), followed by a position as Assistant Professor at the Albert-Ludwigs-University’s Institut für Biologie (Freiburg/Germany). In 1995, he obtained a permanent position at the CNRS in the laboratory Bioenergetics and Protein Engineering (Marseille/France) where he founded and headed the research group “Evolution of Bioenergetics”. This group investigates the bioenergetic processes of phylogenetically diverse microorganisms with the aim of elucidating evolutionary pathways from early to extant life and of discerning common, conserved patterns informing on the bioenergetic processes likely to have operated in the earliest forms of life on our planet. Over the last 5 years, the group has extended its research activities towards characterizing mineral-based processes potentially representing abiotic precursors of crucial reaction schemes in living systems.

Simon Duval is a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Marseille, France, since 2018, where he is part of a team focused on the evolution of bioenergetics. He earned his PhD from Aix-Marseille University, where he studied the redox properties and evolution of molybdenum enzymes, in particular arsenite oxidase. Following his PhD, Simon pursued several postdoctoral projects, mostly investigating electron transfer in metalloproteins. Notably, he spent two years at Utah State University (Logan, USA) with Professor Lance Seefeldt, where he explored the properties of Fe-nitrogenase using spectroscopic and biochemical methods.