title: Free energy conversion in the LUCA: Quo vadis?
abstract: Living entities are unimaginable without means to harvest free energy from the environment, that is, without bioenergetics. The quest to understand the bioenergetic ways of early life therefore is one of the crucial elements to understand the emergence of life on our planet. Over the last few years, several mutually exclusive scenarios for primordial bioenergetics have been put forward, all of which are based on some sort of empirical observation, a remarkable step forward from the previous, essentially untestable, ab initio models. We here try to present and compare these scenarios while at the same time discuss their respective empirical weaknesses. The goal of this article is to harness crucial new expertise from the entire field by stimulating a larger part of the bioenergetics community to become involved in "origin-of-energy-metabolism" research. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: 18th European Bioenergetic Conference.
authors.affiliation: Beadle Center, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 1901 Vine Street, Lincoln, NE 68588-0660, USA.
authors.forename: Anne-Lise
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Ducluzeau
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Bioénergétique et Ingénierie des Protéines UMR 7281 CNRS/AMU, FR3479, F-13402 Marseille Cedex 20, France.
authors.forename: Barbara
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Schoepp-Cothenet
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Bioénergétique et Ingénierie des Protéines UMR 7281 CNRS/AMU, FR3479, F-13402 Marseille Cedex 20, France.
authors.forename: Frauke
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Baymann
authors.affiliation: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109-8099, USA.
authors.forename: Michael J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Russell
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Bioénergétique et Ingénierie des Protéines UMR 7281 CNRS/AMU, FR3479, F-13402 Marseille Cedex 20, France. Electronic address: nitschke@imm.cnrs.fr.
authors.forename: Wolfgang
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Nitschke
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001426:Bacterial Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D004734:Energy Metabolism; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D010088:Oxidoreductases / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D010940:Plant Proteins / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D001426:Bacterial Proteins; D010940:Plant Proteins; D010088:Oxidoreductases
keywords: Evolution of bioenergetics; Last universal common ancestor; Quinone; Sodium pumping; Wood–Ljungdahl pathway