"Chemists discover plausible recipe for early life on Earth" Topic

"Their experiments, described today in the journal Nature Communications, demonstrate that key chemical reactions that support life today could have been carried out with ingredients likely present on the planet four billion years ago.

"This was a black box for us," said Ramanarayanan Krishnamurthy, PhD, associate professor of chemistry at TSRI and senior author of the new study. "But if you focus on the chemistry, the questions of origins of life become less daunting."

For the new study, Krishnamurthy and his coauthors, who are all members of the National Science Foundation/National Aeronautics and Space Administration Center for Chemical Evolution, focused on a series of chemical reactions that make up what researchers refer to as the citric acid cycle…"
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Amicalement
Armand

From the article:

Every aerobic organism, from flamingoes to fungi, relies on the citric acid cycle to release stored energy in cells.

Technically, that is not correct. The cycle phosphorylates a chemical called ADP (adenosine diphosphate) and thereby converts it to ATP (adenosine triphosphate). ATP is easily stored and acts like the chemical battery for all life. In the mitochondria of eukaryotes or the cytoplasm of bacteria, ATP is once again broken down to ADP and P. This is a very high energy bond that releases a lot of energy which is the engine that drives metabolism.

The other name for the Citric Acid Cycle is the Krebs Cycle, which is my namesake. Hence the interest.

Thanks Bowman….!

Amicalement
Armand