Journal ArticleDOI
Submarine hydrothermal vents and associated gradient environments as sites for the origin and evolution of life
John A. Baross,Sarah E. Hoffman +1 more
TLDR
In this paper, the authors expand upon the geophysical, chemical, and possible microbiological analogies between contemporary and Archean hydrothermal systems and suggest several hypotheses, related to their model for the origin and evolution of life at Archean vents, which can be tested in present-day hydrothermic systems.Abstract:
Submarine hydrothermal vents are the only comtemporary geological environment which may be called truly primeval; they continue to be a major source of gases and dissolved elements to the modern ocean as they were to the Archean ocean. Then, as now, they encompassed a multiplicity of physical and chemical gradients as a direct result of interactions between extensive hydrothermal activity in the Earth's crust and the overlying oceanic and atmospheric environments. We have proposed that these gradients provided the necessary multiple pathways for the abiotic synthesis of chemical compounds, origin and evolution of ‘precells’ and ‘precell’ communities and, ultimately, the evolution of free-living organisms. This hypothesis is consistent with the tectonic, paleontological, and degassing history of the earth and with the use of thermal energy sources in the laboratory to synthesize amino acids and complex organic compounds. In this paper, we expand upon the geophysical, chemical, and possible microbiological analogies between contemporary and Archean hydrothermal systems and suggest several hypotheses, related to our model for the origin and evolution of life at Archean vents, which can be tested in present-day hydrothermal systems.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Dissimilatory Fe(III) and Mn(IV) reduction.
TL;DR: The physiological characteristics of Geobacter species appear to explain why they have consistently been found to be the predominant Fe(III)- and Mn(IV)-reducing microorganisms in a variety of sedimentary environments.
Book ChapterDOI
Dissimilatory Fe(III) and Mn(IV) reduction.
TL;DR: The ability to oxidize hydrogen with the reduction of Fe(III) is a highly conserved characteristic of hyperthermophilic microorganisms, most notably those in the Geobacteraceae family as mentioned in this paper.
Journal ArticleDOI
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?
Journal ArticleDOI
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.
Journal ArticleDOI
The physiology and habitat of the last universal common ancestor
Madeline C. Weiss,Filipa L. Sousa,Natalia Mrnjavac,Sinje Neukirchen,Mayo Roettger,Shijulal Nelson-Sathi,William Martin +6 more
TL;DR: The data support the theory of an autotrophic origin of life involving the Wood–Ljungdahl pathway in a hydrothermal setting and identify clostridia and methanogens, whose modern lifestyles resemble that of LUCA, as basal among their respective domains.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Submarine Thermal Springs on the Galápagos Rift
John B. Corliss,Jack Dymond,Louis I. Gordon,John M. Edmond,Richard P. Von Herzen,Robert D. Ballard,Kenneth Green,David L. Williams,Arnold E. Bainbridge,Kathy Crane,Tjeerd H. van Andel +10 more
TL;DR: It is suggested that two-thirds of the heat lost from new oceanic lithosphere at the Gal�pagos Rift in the first million years may be vented from thermal springs, predominantly along the axial ridge within the rift valley.
Journal ArticleDOI
An oxygen isotope profile in a section of Cretaceous oceanic crust, Samail Ophiolite, Oman: Evidence for δ18O buffering of the oceans by deep (>5 km) seawater-hydrothermal circulation at mid-ocean ridges
Robert T. Gregory,Hugh P. Taylor +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, isotopic analyses of 75 samples from the Samail ophiolite indicate that pervasive subsolidus hydrothermal exchange with seawater occurred throughout the upper 75% of this 8 km-thick oceanic crustal section; locally, the H_2O even penetrated down into the tectonized peridotite.
BookDOI
Thermophilic microorganisms and life at high temperatures
TL;DR: In this article, the authors studied the effect of temperature on physical and chemical parameters of the organisms in the Hot Springs of Yellowstone National Park in the US and found that there is an upper temperature limit for life.
Journal ArticleDOI
East Pacific Rise: Hot Springs and Geophysical Experiments
Fred N. Spiess,Ken C. Macdonald,Tanya Atwater,Robert D. Ballard,A. Carranza,D. Cordoba,C. Cox,V. M. Diaz Garcia,J. Francheteau,José Manuel Crespo Guerrero,James W. Hawkins,Rachel M. Haymon,Robert R. Hessler,Tierre Juteau,Miriam Kastner,Roger L. Larson,Bruce P. Luyendyk,J. D. Macdougall,Stanley L. Miller,William R. Normark,John A. Orcutt,Claude Rangin +21 more
TL;DR: High-resolution determinations of crustal properties along the spreading center were made to gain knowledge of the source of new oceanic crust and marine magnetic anomalies, the nature of the axial magma chamber, and the depth of hydrothermal circulation.
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