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Phosphorus availability on the early Earth and the impacts of life

Nature Geoscience volume 16, pages 399–409 (2023)Cite this article

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A Publisher Correction to this article was published on 22 May 2023

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Abstract

Phosphorus (P) is critical to modern biochemical functions and can control ecosystem growth. It was presumably important as a reagent in prebiotic chemistry. However, on the early Earth, P sources may have consisted primarily of poorly soluble calcium phosphates, which may have rendered phosphate as a minimally available nutrient or reagent if these minerals were the sole source. Here, we review aqueous P availability on the early Earth (>2.5 Gyr ago), considering both mineral sources and geochemical sinks relevant to its solvation, and activation by abiotic and biological pathways. Phosphorus on Earth’s early surface would have been present as a mixture of phosphate minerals, as a minor element in silicate minerals, and in reactive, reduced phases from accreted dust, meteorites and asteroids. These P sources would have weathered and plausibly furnished the prebiotic Earth with abundant and potentially reactive P. After the origin of a biosphere, life evolved to draw on not just reactive available P sources, but also insoluble and unreactive sources. The rise of an ecosystem dependent on this element at some point forged a P-limited biosphere, with evolutionary stress forcing the efficient extraction and recycling of P from both abiotic and biotic sources and sinks.

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Fig. 1: Modern and ancient P inventories of the Earth.
Fig. 2: Prebiotic versus biotic P availability.
Fig. 3: Cellular acquisition of various P species.
Fig. 4: P sources, sinks and recycling pathways.
Fig. 5: Simplified model of marine Pi availability.
Fig. 6: Parameter space of global P cycling evolution11,27,52,72,77,78,89,108.

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Acknowledgements

C.R.W. acknowledges the NERC and UKRI for support through a NERC DTP studentship, grant number NE/L002507/1. S.E. and J.D.C. acknowledge support from the US DOE, grant number DE-SC0020156. C.R.W. acknowledges funding from the Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe and Institute for Life and Planets in the Universe (grant title: ‘Did cosmic dust fertilize prebiotic chemistry?’). Funding for research on phosphorus redox cycling was generously provided to J.D.C. by the EBI–Shell Research Program. S.E. was supported by the EBI–Shell Directors’ fellowship. C.R. acknowledges support from the NASA Interdisciplinary Consortia for Astrobiology Research (ICAR) and the NASA Exobiology Program. J.H. acknowledges support from the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB 41000000), National Key R&D Program of China (2021YFA0718200), CAS Hundred-Talents Program and CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholarship. M.A.P. was supported by the NASA Exobiology Program (80NSSCC18K1288 and 80NSSC22K0509).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Craig R. Walton

  2. Department of Plant and Microbial Biology, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Sophia Ewens & John D. Coates

  3. Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Ruth E. Blake & Noah J. Planavsky

  4. School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Christopher Reinhard

  5. State Key Laboratory of Continental Dynamics and Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Early Life and Environment, Department of Geology, Northwest University, Xi’an, China

    Pengcheng Ju

  6. CAS Key Laboratory of Crust-Mantle Materials and Environments, School of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China

    Jihua Hao

  7. CAS Center for Excellence in Comparative Planetology, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China

    Jihua Hao

  8. School of Geosciences, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA

    Matthew A. Pasek

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C.R.W., J.H., S.E., J.D.C. and M.A.P. planned and wrote the paper. Data analysis was performed by all authors, who also edited the text.

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Correspondence to Jihua Hao or Matthew A. Pasek.

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Walton, C.R., Ewens, S., Coates, J.D. et al. Phosphorus availability on the early Earth and the impacts of life. Nat. Geosci. 16, 399–409 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-023-01167-6

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