Methane is a key compound in the global carbon cycle that influences both nutrient cycling
and the Earth's climate. A limited number of microorganisms control the flux of biologically …

Submarine hydrothermal vents are geochemically reactive habitats that harbour rich
microbial communities. There are striking parallels between the chemistry of the H2–CO2 …

The concept of a last universal common ancestor of all cells (LUCA, or the progenote) is
central to the study of early evolution and life's origin, yet information about how and where …

Methanogenic and methanotrophic archaea play important roles in the global flux of
methane. Culture-independent approaches are providing deeper insight into the diversity …

Methane has been proposed as an exoplanet biosignature. Imminent observations with the
James Webb Space Telescope may enable methane detections on potentially habitable …

A model for the origin of biochemistry at an alkaline hydrothermal vent has been developed
that focuses on the acetyl-CoA (Wood–Ljungdahl) pathway of CO2 fixation and central …

Acetogens utilize the acetyl‐CoA Wood‐Ljungdahl pathway as a terminal electron‐
accepting, energy‐conserving, CO2‐fixing process. The decades of research to resolve the …

Bathyarchaeota, formerly known as the Miscellaneous Crenarchaeotal Group, is a phylum of
global generalists that are widespread in anoxic sediments, which host relatively high …

Over the last 70 years, prebiotic chemists have been very successful in synthesizing the
molecules of life, from amino acids to nucleotides. Yet there is strikingly little resemblance …

Under enzyme catalysis, adenosine triphosphate (ATP) transfers a phosphoryl group to
canonical ribonucleotide diphosphates (NDPs) to form ribonucleotide triphosphates (NTPs) …