A new study has identified one of the key elements in the origin of life on Earth

A new study by American scientists, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , sheds light on the role of transition metals in the development of life on Earth. Scientists have found that iron was a key metal for early life forms, playing a fundamental role in supporting biological processes from the earliest days of single-celled organisms.

Iron, like other transition metals, supports important biological processes, including respiration, DNA transcription, and metabolism. Most of the enzymes that drive chemical reactions in cells depend on metals, but a new study indicates that iron was the first, and possibly the only, transition metal available to early life.

The main conclusions of the study:

1. The Role of Iron in Early Life: Scientists say that early life depended on the metals it could interact with in the early iron-rich ocean. Other transition metals were extremely rare and did not play a significant role in biological processes at that time.
2. Metals Estimation Model: Scientists developed a model to estimate the concentrations of metals in Earth's early oceans, which showed a significant decrease in dissolved iron levels after the Oxygen Catastrophe, a global atmospheric change that occurred about 2.5 billion years ago when free oxygen appeared.
3. Shifting to Other Metals: The findings suggest that iron was the dominant metal in the early oceans before the Oxygen Catastrophe, and later, as oxygen levels increased and iron became less soluble, organisms began to use other metals, such as zinc, manganese and copper, to support their vital functions.
4. Adaptation and Diversity of Life: A decrease in the level of iron prompted early organisms to adapt and use other chemical elements, which contributed to the emergence of new vital functions and the diversity of life forms on Earth.

This discovery calls into question established ideas about the irreplaceability of certain metals in biological processes and emphasizes the importance of iron in the history of the development of life on our planet.