Hydrogen-driven catalysis modeling central metabolic reduction reactions

Overview & Synopsis

Prebiotic chemistry aims to elucidate how modern biochemistry emerged from geochemistry and abiotic matter. This thesis supports the idea that protometabolic networks first emerged at the origin of life and that simple metal catalyst can catalyze or promote transformations analogous to the extant metabolism. Hydrogen, whose presence on the early Earth is assumed for geological, biological, and geological reasons, was used as a reducing agent with catalytic amounts of transition metals or meteorite powder. The investigated transformations, a sequence of the reverse Krebs cycle transforming oxaloacetate to succinate, reductive amination for amino acid synthesis, and NAD+ reduction, which are linked in extant biochemistry, proceed under similar conditions, such as ambient temperatures, neutral to slightly basic pH under hydrogen pressures between 1−5 bar.