“A connection between ZnS prebiotic photosynthesis and clay replication has now been established in a paper published by a team of scientists from the University of Kentucky and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United Sates, and McGill University in Canada. The paper has related how prebiotic metabolites available from simple sunlight promoted reactions can catalyze the synthesis of clay minerals.”
The interesting part of the article is that simple minerals such as zinc sulfide (ZnS) are capable of harvesting sunlight energy, and catabolizing chemical bonds of dicarboxylic acids from CO2, hence metabolic reactions before the existence of enzymes! Simply, that life emerges from molecular light reactions…
A new idea connects the synthesis of clays and the origin of metabolism
https://phys.org/news/2017-04-idea-synthesis-clays-metabolism.html
