M
Michael J. Russell
Researcher at California Institute of Technology
Publications - 143
Citations - 11084
Michael J. Russell is an academic researcher from California Institute of Technology. The author has contributed to research in topics: Hydrothermal circulation & Hydrothermal vent. The author has an hindex of 52, co-authored 141 publications receiving 9768 citations. Previous affiliations of Michael J. Russell include University of Glasgow & University of Grenoble.
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Hydrothermal vents and the origin of life
TL;DR: Hydrothermal vents unite microbiology and geology to breathe new life into research into one of biology's most important questions — what is the origin of life?
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The emergence of life from iron monosulphide bubbles at a submarine hydrothermal redox and pH front
Michael J. Russell,A. J. Hall +1 more
TL;DR: The hypothesis is that the FeS membrane, laced with nickel, acted as a semipermeable catalytic boundary between the two fluids, encouraging synthesis of organic anions by hydrogenation and carboxylation of hydrothermal organic primers, and led to the miniaturization of the metabolizing system.
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On the origins of cells: a hypothesis for the evolutionary transitions from abiotic geochemistry to chemoautotrophic prokaryotes, and from prokaryotes to nucleated cells
TL;DR: The universal ancestor the authors infer was not a free-living cell, but rather was confined to the naturally chemiosmotic, FeS compartments within which the synthesis of its constituents occurred, leading to the emergence of prokaryotic lineages from inorganic confines.
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On the origin of biochemistry at an alkaline hydrothermal vent.
TL;DR: Thermodynamic considerations related to formyl pterin synthesis suggest that the ability to harness a naturally pre-existing proton gradient at the vent–ocean interface via an ATPase is older than the able to generate a protongradient with chemistry that is specified by genes.
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Serpentinization as a source of energy at the origin of life.
TL;DR: Hydrothermal mounds accumulating at similar sites in today's oceans offer conceptual and experimental models for the chemistry germane to the emergence of life, although the ubiquity of microbial communities at such sites in addition to the authors' oxygenated atmosphere preclude an exact analogy.