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UV-light-driven prebiotic synthesis of iron–sulfur clusters

Abstract

Iron–sulfur clusters are ancient cofactors that play a fundamental role in metabolism and may have impacted the prebiotic chemistry that led to life. However, it is unclear whether iron–sulfur clusters could have been synthesized on prebiotic Earth. Dissolved iron on early Earth was predominantly in the reduced ferrous state, but ferrous ions alone cannot form polynuclear iron–sulfur clusters. Similarly, free sulfide may not have been readily available. Here we show that UV light drives the synthesis of [2Fe–2S] and [4Fe–4S] clusters through the photooxidation of ferrous ions and the photolysis of organic thiols. Iron–sulfur clusters coordinate to and are stabilized by a wide range of cysteine-containing peptides and the assembly of iron–sulfur cluster-peptide complexes can take place within model protocells in a process that parallels extant pathways. Our experiments suggest that iron–sulfur clusters may have formed easily on early Earth, facilitating the emergence of an iron–sulfur-cluster-dependent metabolism.

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Figure 1: Light-driven, prebiotic synthesis of iron–sulfur peptides.
Figure 2: UV-light desulfurization of the cysteine of glutathione to an alanine.
Figure 3: Prebiotic pathways for the synthesis of iron–sulfur clusters.
Figure 4: [2Fe–2S] cluster formation in situ within fatty-acid vesicles.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the Simons Foundation (290360 to D.D.S., 290363 to J.W.S., 290362 to J.D.S., 290358 to S.S.M.), the Armenise-Harvard Foundation (to S.S.M.), COST action CM1304 (to C.B., J.D.S. and S.S.M.) and the University of Hull (to D.J.E. and S.Sh.) for funding. The authors thank L. Belmonte, C. Caumes, E. Izgu, E. Godino, N. Kamat, A. Mariani, T. Olsen, D. Rossetto, Z. Todd, O.D. Toparlak, A. Trifonov and M. Tsanakopoulou for discussions.

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Authors

Contributions

C.B., S.Sc., L.J., J.W.S., D.D.S., J.D.S. and S.S.M. designed the experiments. Photochemical studies, peptide synthesis and cluster stability were performed by C.B. and L.V. Mössbauer spectra were recorded and analysed by S.Sh. and D.J.E. The manuscript was written by C.B. and S.S.M. and edited by C.B., S.Sc., D.J.E., J.W.S., D.D.S., J.D.S. and S.S.M.

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Correspondence to Sheref S. Mansy.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Bonfio, C., Valer, L., Scintilla, S. et al. UV-light-driven prebiotic synthesis of iron–sulfur clusters. Nature Chem 9, 1229–1234 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.2817

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