Feb 25, 2025 05:38 PM
(This post was last modified: Feb 26, 2025 12:57 AM by C C.)
Unusual ‘soda lakes’ may have kick-started life on Earth by concentrating key compounds
https://www.science.org/content/article/...-compounds
EXCERPTS: Be they microbes or monkeys, organisms require phosphorus—and lots of it. It’s a key component of DNA and RNA, of the adenosine triphosphate that fuels living cells, and of the lipids that make up cell membranes. The element’s centrality has long puzzled researchers trying to understand early life, because phosphorus isn’t naturally abundant in most watery environments, the kind of place where life probably began. Now, a trio of new papers supports a recent proposal that volcanic activity around highly alkaline “soda” lakes—and perhaps hot springs—could have enabled phosphorus compounds to accumulate to levels needed for life to start and spread.
[...] The recognition that phosphorus availability was a likely bottleneck on the road to life dates as far back as 1955, to work by American biochemist Addison Gulick. The origin of life would likely have required high concentrations of compounds such as phosphate—a phosphorus atom surrounded by four oxygens. In oceans, rivers, and most lakes the phosphate concentration is typically 10,000 times too low.
Early Earth was different, though. Phosphorus is present in volcanic lavas, and the young planet had a lot more volcanic activity than today...
[...] Soda lakes are another place that could happen, as University of Washington earth scientists David Catling and Jonathan Toner first proposed in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2019. Such lakes also form in volcanic environments, in closed basins filled by runoff that has weathered sodium and carbonate—the ingredients of baking soda—out of volcanic rocks. With no outflow, the lakes lose water only to evaporation, which concentrates the chemicals over time.
[...] In a paper published online on 4 February in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, Catling and his colleagues conclude that before life began, soda lakes could have accumulated enough phosphate to make life possible. “This type of lake would be archetypal on the early Earth,” Catling says, because volcanic activity was so prevalent then... (MORE - missing details)
Humans inherited their flexible joints from the earliest jawed fish
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002990
PRESS RELEASE: The efficient architecture of our joints, which allows our skeletons to be flexible and sturdy, originated among our most ancient jawed fish ancestors, according to a study published February 25th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Neelima Sharma of the University of Chicago and colleagues.
Synovial joints are a key feature of most vertebrate skeletons, providing more mobility and stability compared to other joint types. A synovial joint allows bones or cartilage to slide past each other with the aid of a lubricated cavity between them. These joints are present in land vertebrates and bony fish, suggesting this feature had evolved in the common ancestors of these groups, but it remains unclear when in early vertebrate evolution these joints originated.
In this study, Sharma and colleagues examined the anatomy and development of joints in members of two early-branching vertebrate lineages: one species of jawless fish, sea lampreys, and two species of cartilaginous fish, bamboo sharks and little skates. Analysis revealed cavitated joints in the cartilaginous fish, but not in lampreys. Additionally, the cartilaginous fish exhibited certain proteins and developmental processes that are shared with synovial joints of other vertebrates. Furthermore, the researchers employed CT-scans to identify a similar cavitated joint in the fossil fish Bothriolepis, the most ancient known synovial joint.
Altogether, these results show that synovial joints are shared across jawed fish, but apparently absent in jawless fish, indicating that these joints first evolved in the ancestors of jawed vertebrates. This study provides critical information for research into the origins of the skeletal architecture of vertebrates, including ourselves. The authors suggest that future steps might include analysis of joint morphology in other fossil fish lineages and further comparisons between joints of jawed and jawless vertebrates to uncover more details about early joint evolution.
The authors add, “The origin of mobile joints in our fish ancestors enabled them to move about and feed in new ways. This study shows that the developmental processes that are responsible for these joints arose deep within the fish evolutionary tree.”
In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Biology: https://plos.io/3Qzgcbr
https://www.science.org/content/article/...-compounds
EXCERPTS: Be they microbes or monkeys, organisms require phosphorus—and lots of it. It’s a key component of DNA and RNA, of the adenosine triphosphate that fuels living cells, and of the lipids that make up cell membranes. The element’s centrality has long puzzled researchers trying to understand early life, because phosphorus isn’t naturally abundant in most watery environments, the kind of place where life probably began. Now, a trio of new papers supports a recent proposal that volcanic activity around highly alkaline “soda” lakes—and perhaps hot springs—could have enabled phosphorus compounds to accumulate to levels needed for life to start and spread.
[...] The recognition that phosphorus availability was a likely bottleneck on the road to life dates as far back as 1955, to work by American biochemist Addison Gulick. The origin of life would likely have required high concentrations of compounds such as phosphate—a phosphorus atom surrounded by four oxygens. In oceans, rivers, and most lakes the phosphate concentration is typically 10,000 times too low.
Early Earth was different, though. Phosphorus is present in volcanic lavas, and the young planet had a lot more volcanic activity than today...
[...] Soda lakes are another place that could happen, as University of Washington earth scientists David Catling and Jonathan Toner first proposed in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2019. Such lakes also form in volcanic environments, in closed basins filled by runoff that has weathered sodium and carbonate—the ingredients of baking soda—out of volcanic rocks. With no outflow, the lakes lose water only to evaporation, which concentrates the chemicals over time.
[...] In a paper published online on 4 February in Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, Catling and his colleagues conclude that before life began, soda lakes could have accumulated enough phosphate to make life possible. “This type of lake would be archetypal on the early Earth,” Catling says, because volcanic activity was so prevalent then... (MORE - missing details)
Humans inherited their flexible joints from the earliest jawed fish
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002990
PRESS RELEASE: The efficient architecture of our joints, which allows our skeletons to be flexible and sturdy, originated among our most ancient jawed fish ancestors, according to a study published February 25th in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Neelima Sharma of the University of Chicago and colleagues.
Synovial joints are a key feature of most vertebrate skeletons, providing more mobility and stability compared to other joint types. A synovial joint allows bones or cartilage to slide past each other with the aid of a lubricated cavity between them. These joints are present in land vertebrates and bony fish, suggesting this feature had evolved in the common ancestors of these groups, but it remains unclear when in early vertebrate evolution these joints originated.
In this study, Sharma and colleagues examined the anatomy and development of joints in members of two early-branching vertebrate lineages: one species of jawless fish, sea lampreys, and two species of cartilaginous fish, bamboo sharks and little skates. Analysis revealed cavitated joints in the cartilaginous fish, but not in lampreys. Additionally, the cartilaginous fish exhibited certain proteins and developmental processes that are shared with synovial joints of other vertebrates. Furthermore, the researchers employed CT-scans to identify a similar cavitated joint in the fossil fish Bothriolepis, the most ancient known synovial joint.
Altogether, these results show that synovial joints are shared across jawed fish, but apparently absent in jawless fish, indicating that these joints first evolved in the ancestors of jawed vertebrates. This study provides critical information for research into the origins of the skeletal architecture of vertebrates, including ourselves. The authors suggest that future steps might include analysis of joint morphology in other fossil fish lineages and further comparisons between joints of jawed and jawless vertebrates to uncover more details about early joint evolution.
The authors add, “The origin of mobile joints in our fish ancestors enabled them to move about and feed in new ways. This study shows that the developmental processes that are responsible for these joints arose deep within the fish evolutionary tree.”
In your coverage, please use this URL to provide access to the freely available paper in PLOS Biology: https://plos.io/3Qzgcbr