Prebiotic metabolism gets a boost

Fahrenbach, Albert C.; Tran, Quoc Phuong

doi:10.1038/s41557-020-00567-0

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 7 publications

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“…Sequence-based metabolic reconstruction indicates a potential autotrophic or mixotrophic lifestyle for early cells, providing incomplete biosynthesis pathways for the building blocks for life, including some essential amino acids and cofactors 4 , 5 . In addition, it is generally assumed that cellular ancestors arose from building blocks (i.e., nucleic acids, amino acids, peptides, lipid vesicles) under ‘prebiotically plausible’ conditions and were underpinned by non-enzymatic prebiotic metabolism 12 . A recent thermodynamic study on conserved and universal core reactions agreed that metabolic pathways possibly originated in hydrothermal systems, in which 95–97% of the synthesized reactions are exergonic under the environmental conditions of hydrothermal vents 13 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Proteome-wide 3D structure prediction provides insights into the ancestral metabolism of ancient archaea and bacteria

et al. 2022

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Ancestral metabolism has remained controversial due to a lack of evidence beyond sequence-based reconstructions. Although prebiotic chemists have provided hints that metabolism might originate from non-enzymatic protometabolic pathways, gaps between ancestral reconstruction and prebiotic processes mean there is much that is still unknown. Here, we apply proteome-wide 3D structure predictions and comparisons to investigate ancestorial metabolism of ancient bacteria and archaea, to provide information beyond sequence as a bridge to the prebiotic processes. We compare representative bacterial and archaeal strains, which reveal surprisingly similar physiological and metabolic characteristics via microbiological and biophysical experiments. Pairwise comparison of protein structures identify the conserved metabolic modules in bacteria and archaea, despite interference from overly variable sequences. The conserved modules (for example, middle of glycolysis, partial TCA, proton/sulfur respiration, building block biosynthesis) constitute the basic functions that possibly existed in the archaeal-bacterial common ancestor, which are remarkably consistent with the experimentally confirmed protometabolic pathways. These structure-based findings provide a new perspective to reconstructing the ancestral metabolism and understanding its origin, which suggests high-throughput protein 3D structure prediction is a promising approach, deserving broader application in future ancestral exploration.

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