Abstract It is widely assumed that the first organisms were fermenting cells growing on prebiotic compounds and that the mode of energy conservation was substrate-level phosphorylation. But the primitive environment was probably relatively short in supply of fermentable substrates. Therefore, new strategies of energy conservation had to be developed relatively early. These include the evolution of membrane-bound phosphorylation systems that were able to use membrane potentials and/or ion gradients for synthesis of energy-rich compounds such as ATP or perhaps inorganic pyrophosphate. A first stage in this development may have been the coupling of membrane-bound decarboxylation to ATP synthesis. The coupling of simple membrane-bound redox reactions to ATP synthesis as modelled by contemporary fumarate or sulfur respiration may have appeared almost simultaneously. In either case, suitable substrates probably were scarce. Therefore the organisms soon may have been forced to develop strategies that were based on less exhaustible resources. These strategies likely included the coupling of membrane-bound ATP synthesis to electron transfer reactions that involved the use of ubiquitous electron acceptors like Fe3+, sulfate or CO2. But with the evolution of more efficient respiratory systems the abiotically produced organic molecules may have become short in supply, so that the evolution of phosphosynthetic CO2 reduction for the production of new biomass must have followed immediately.


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    Title :

    The bioenergetics of anaerobic bacteria: Evolutionary concepts


    Contributors:
    Dose, K. (author)

    Published in:

    Publication date :

    1989-01-01


    Size :

    8 pages




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English



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