The question of how the first life on Earth appeared is one of the eternal themes that have not yet been revealed. There are 123 theories related to the origin of life, and various approaches are being made, such as trying to explain it with algorithms simulating molecular motion. In a report published in March by a research team at Rutgers University in the United States, it was identified as a substance with a metabolic origin that was the driving force behind life on Earth, indicating that this could have caused life on Earth.
The research team announced that they had discovered a simple substance with a metabolic origin close to the metabolism-first model. According to a paper published in the journal Science Advances, hydrogen is required for the metabolic process for life to survive on the primitive earth in an anoxic state, and hydrogenase, an enzyme that has the effect of activating hydrogen gas, is the ancestor of life. There is also a study called However, since the existing hydrogenase is a complex structure composed of hundreds of amino acids and multiple cofactors, the research team assumed that there was a small and simple component substance, named Nickel Bag, and designed a nickel-binding peptide composed of 13 amino acids and conducted experiments.
As a result, modern enzymes involved in life metabolism are quite complex, but it was found that they were simple peptide precursors on the early Earth and likely evolved here. The research team considers nickel to be a metal abundant in the early ocean, and when nickel is combined with peptides, the nickel atom becomes a catalyst to generate hydrogen gas, which is an important energy source for promoting metabolism. I think there was
Regarding this research, the research team said that scientists believe there was a turning point somewhere between 3.5 billion and 3.8 billion years ago. It is thought to be caused by a small peptide precursor that plays a role.
The research is being conducted in collaboration with a research team led by Rutgers University and NASA’s Astrobiology Program, which is looking for biosignatures that indicate new signs of life in space. In November 2020, a NASA research team announced that it had discovered a carbon compound that could form life on Saturn’s moon Titan as a biosignature. This is because peptides such as Nickelback can serve as biosignatures for detecting planets where life is born.
Also, there are many theories about the origin of life, but few examples have tested these ideas in the actual laboratory. This study shows that not only simple protein metabolizing enzymes can exist, but that they are quite stable and active, so it is a plausible explanation as the starting point of life. It is claiming the significance of the study saying that it is becoming. In addition, by examining the possibility that metal peptides, including nickelback, can act as catalysts in many reactions, such as redox reactions, it is expected that the origins of peptides in major ancient metabolic reaction networks can be elucidated in various ways. Related information this placecan be found in