Nitschke W., Duval S. Metal Ions and the Route to Life 2025

Textbook in PDF format

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!