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Published in:
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2013 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

1. The Role of Phosphorus in the Origin of Life and in Evolution

Authors : Mikhail Butusov, Arne Jernelöv

Published in: Phosphorus

Publisher: Springer New York

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Abstract

Phosphorus, in the form of phosphate, has played an important role in the origin and evolution of life on several different levels. It was, most likely, a key component in the early precursors of RNA that existed before real life, where it both stored information and acted as a catalyst. It plays an essential role in both the genetics and the energy systems of all living cells as well as in the cell membrane of all modern cells. Phosphorus has also had a decisive role in forming the climatic and atmospheric conditions that set the boundary conditions for evolution and led to us humans and the world we know now.

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next chapter Phosphorus in the Organic Life: Cells, Tissues, Organisms
Footnotes
1
In the context of evolution, the ‘chicken and egg’ metaphor is actually a dumb one as the question which came first has an obvious answer. Wherever we draw the evolutionary line for when the chicken as a species first appeared, the egg was there long before as more primitive birds, dinosaurs, lizards, and fishes all have eggs.
 
2
It has been argued that the co-precipitation of oxidized iron and phosphates with which we are familiar today would not have occurred the same way in the ancient oceans because the concentration of silica was much higher then and that silica would have outcompeted phosphorus on the iron-binding sites, and the phosphate therefore would not have become a limiting factor for photosynthesis at the time. However, a lower rate of carbon burial strongly points to a lower carbon fixation and the iron–phosphate precipitation mechanism provides a reasonable explanation for it.
 
3
It should be noted that more than 2 billion years ago the continents were not in the same positions as they are today. Over the history of the Earth there have been at least four occasions when all the landmass formed one supercontinent surrounded by one ocean. The land then broke up into separate continents and reformed again. The latest supercontinent, called Pangaea, was formed 300 million years ago and broke up to form the globe with which we are familiar some 200 million years ago. The oldest known supercontinent, Columbia or Nuna, was probably assembled some 2 billion years ago, that is, at the end of or just after the Huronian glaciation. It lasted for about 500 million years, but the exact configuration and geodynamic history are not well understood. It was followed by Rodinia (1,100–750 million years ago), the short-lived Pannotia (600–540 million years ago) with large amounts of land near the poles and a small equatorial strip connecting the polar masses, and Pangaea.
 
Literature
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Arrhenius S (1908) Worlds in the making: the evolution of the universe. Harper and Row, New York
Cech TR (1990) Self-splicing of group I introns. Annu Rev Biochem 59:543–568CrossRef
Corliss JB, Baross JA, Hoffman SE (1981) An hypothesis concerning the relationship between submarine hot springs and the origin of life on Earth. Oceanol Acta, p 59. Proceedings of the 26th International Geological Congress
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Watson JD, Crick FHC (1953) A structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid. Nature 171:737–738CrossRef
Wolfe-Simon F, Blum JS, Kulp TR, Gordon GW, Hoeft SE, Pett-Ridge J, Stolz JF, Webb SM, Weber PK, Davies PCW, Anbar AD, Oremland RS (2011) A bacterium that can grow by using arsenic instead of phosphorus. Science 332(6034):1163–1166 (published online 2 Dec 2010)
Metadata
Title
The Role of Phosphorus in the Origin of Life and in Evolution
Authors
Mikhail Butusov
Arne Jernelöv
Copyright Year
2013
Publisher
Springer New York
Book
Phosphorus

Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-6802-8

Electronic ISBN: 978-1-4614-6803-5

Copyright Year: 2013

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6803-5_1