Matreux Thomas, Schmid Almuth, Rappold Mechthild, Weller Daniel, Çalışkanoğlu Ayşe Zeynep, Moore Kelsey R, Bosak Tanja, Dingwell Donald B, Karaghiosoff Konstantin, Guyot François, Scheu Bettina, Braun Dieter, Mast Christof B
Systems Biophysics, Ludwig Maximilians University, Munich, Germany.
Laboratoire de Biophysique et Evolution, UMR CNRS-ESPCI 8231 Chimie Biologie Innovation, PSL University, Paris, France.
Nat Commun. 2025 Feb 20;16(1):1809. doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-57110-3.
Phosphorus is an essential building block of life, likely since its beginning. Despite this importance for prebiotic chemistry, phosphorus was scarce in Earth's rock record and mainly bound in poorly soluble minerals, with the calcium-phosphate mineral apatite as key example. While specific chemical boundary conditions have been considered to address this so-called phosphate problem, a fundamental process that solubilizes and enriches phosphate from geological sources remains elusive. Here, we show that ubiquitous heat flows through rock cracks can liberate phosphate from apatite by the selective removal of calcium. Phosphate's strong thermophoresis not only achieves its 100-fold up-concentration in aqueous solution, but boosts its solubility by two orders of magnitude. We show that the heat-flow-solubilized phosphate can feed the synthesis of trimetaphosphate, increasing the conversion 260-fold compared to thermal equilibrium. Heat flows thus enhance solubility to unlock apatites as phosphate source for prebiotic chemistry, providing a key to early life's phosphate problem.
磷可能自生命起源以来就是生命必不可少的组成部分。尽管磷对生命起源前的化学过程至关重要，但在地球的岩石记录中却很稀少，并且主要以难溶性矿物的形式存在，以磷酸钙矿物磷灰石为关键例子。虽然已经考虑了特定的化学边界条件来解决这个所谓的磷酸盐问题，但一个能溶解并富集地质来源磷酸盐的基本过程仍然难以捉摸。在这里，我们表明，通过岩石裂缝无处不在的热流可以通过选择性去除钙从磷灰石中释放磷酸盐。磷酸盐强烈的热泳不仅使其在水溶液中实现了100倍的浓缩，还将其溶解度提高了两个数量级。我们表明，热流溶解的磷酸盐可以促进三偏磷酸盐的合成，与热平衡相比，转化率提高了260倍。因此，热流增强了溶解度，将磷灰石解锁为生命起源前化学过程的磷酸盐来源，为早期生命的磷酸盐问题提供了关键答案。
