Department of Biomolecular Engineering, Baskin School of Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz, California 95064, USA.
Cold Spring Harb Perspect Biol. 2010 Feb;2(2):a004929. doi: 10.1101/cshperspect.a004929.
Bioenergetics is central to our understanding of living systems, yet has attracted relatively little attention in origins of life research. This article focuses on energy resources available to drive primitive metabolism and the synthesis of polymers that could be incorporated into molecular systems having properties associated with the living state. The compartmented systems are referred to as protocells, each different from all the rest and representing a kind of natural experiment. The origin of life was marked when a rare few protocells happened to have the ability to capture energy from the environment to initiate catalyzed heterotrophic growth directed by heritable genetic information in the polymers. This article examines potential sources of energy available to protocells, and mechanisms by which the energy could be used to drive polymer synthesis.
生物能量学是我们理解生命系统的核心，但在生命起源研究中相对较少受到关注。本文重点介绍了驱动原始代谢和聚合物体合成的可用能源，这些聚合体可以被纳入具有与生命状态相关的特性的分子系统中。这些分隔的系统被称为原细胞，每个原细胞都与其他原细胞不同，代表了一种自然实验。当极少数原细胞碰巧具有从环境中捕获能量的能力，以启动由聚合物中可遗传的遗传信息指导的催化异养生长时，生命的起源就出现了。本文探讨了原细胞可用的潜在能源以及利用能源驱动聚合物体合成的机制。
