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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 20: Posters - Physics of the Genesis of Life (Focus Session)

BP 20.17: Poster

Dienstag, 21. März 2017, 14:00–16:00, P1A

Driving early biochemical reactions by the thermal accumulation of ATP over ADP/AMP? — •Alexandra Kühnlein¹, Christof B. Mast¹, Amelie Benk², Joachim P. Spatz², and Dieter Braun¹ — ¹Systems Biophysics and Center for NanoScience, LMU Munich — ²MPI for Intelligent Systems, Stuttgart

Life is in non-equilibrium. And all prevalent biochemical reactions use ATP as energy source. Can this chemical driving be accomplished from prebiotic gradients? Interestingly, a simple thermal gradient is capable to accumulate ATP over ADP/AMP due to its difference in charge. This mechanism provides a modern energy source with prebiotic mechanisms. With this hypothesis, we can allow previously studied thermal replication and selection systems [1,2] to use ATP as the energy currency of its biochemical reactions. No highly evolved and complex ATP synthase would be necessary for life in its first steps.

Experimentally, we feed the thermal trap with an equilibrium concentration ratio of ATP and ADP. The local accumulation of the energy-rich species is monitored by the fluorescent protein PercevalHR [3] that was generously provided by the Spatz lab.

[1] PRL (2010) doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.188102; [2] Nat. Chem. (2015) doi:10.1038/nchem.2155; [3] Nat. Comm. (2013) doi:10.1038/ncomms3550