Lecture 2- White Light and White Heat

 At 4000 Ma/ 4 billion years ago

o Life forms were seen
o What happened then?
 From ice to fire

o Mineral rich
o Water present

The origins of life- making order out of chaos-

 Stanley Miller
 1953
o Urey-Miller Experiment

 Mimicked the conditions from 4 billion

years ago
 Gases react to heat and energy
 Series of chemical reactions occur
 Organic matter is formed which living
organisms were made from

The Urey-Miller Chemical Cocktail-

CO2 → CO + [O]
CH4 (methane)+ 2[O] → CH2O (formaldehyde) + H2O
CO + NH3 (ammonium)→ HCN (cyanide) + H2O
CH4 + NH3 → HCN + 3H2
CH2O + HCN + NH3 → NH2-CH2-CN (aminoacetonitrile)+ H2O
NH2-CH2-CN + 2H2O → NH3 + NH2-CH2-COOH (glycine)
  If R = hydrogen: Glycine – the simplest amino acid
 Can create organic matter from inorganic matter

Protein are chains of amino acids-

Simple chemicals can form complex structures needed for life-

 Pre-life: spontaneous formation of complex molecules

 Early life: high energy molecules captured from the environment
 Chemotrophs
 Life forms need energy

Harnessing Energy-
  Bond between the phosphates is very energy rich
o By breaking it, a lot of energy is released
 Peter Mitchell
o 1920-1992
o Nobel prize of chem in 1978
o The chemiosmotic hypothesis
 How ATP was made in LUCA

 Black wheel- proton pump

o Creates a conc gradient
 ATPase is used to make ADP to ATP when hydrogen travels down the conc gradient through it

Making a pH gradient-

 Electron transport chain

 Electron transport chains in Archaea and bacteria –
 Feature of LUCA
 Needs electron donors (reductants)
 And electron acceptors (oxidants)
 REDOX
Chemotrophs-
 Use chemicals from the environment as reductants – Chemical Energy
 Reductants: e.g., Fe2+; H2S; S; H2; NH3…
o All high energy, chemically reactive

 Hydrogenase makes hydrogen in to protons which releases electrons

 Chemotrophs rely on a world without equilibrium

 Reactions must overall be exothermic
  Started to use light instead of chemical energy
 LUCA has evolved into bacteria and archaea
 LUCA used up all the chemical energy

Archaean Photosynthesis-

 They are red because they have a protein called bacteriorhodopsin.

Bacteriorhodopsin- retinal-
  Cis-trans isomerisation driven by light – 2 H+ per photon of light.
 Pumps protons but no electrons moved.
 When they absorbed energy, they bend and they go back to original shape when they
release energy
 Energy goes to ATPase.
 In LUCA you needed a proton pump
 Archaea use light to change form to get protons.
 No electrons needed
 Absorb BLUE and GREEN light, so the colour is red

Bacterial photosynthesis-
  Bacteria uses chlorophyll to absorb light
 Multiple forms (a-g)
 Absorb blue light and either red or near infrared
 So, colour is green or purple

Photosynthetic Reaction centers-

 Mating caterpillar proteins

 Two chlorophylls in the center

 Chlorophyll absorbs light and transport electron.
 Turning light energy into chemical (redox) energy

Summary-
• Organisms need energy to make complex molecules out of simple ones
• First organisms used chemical sources of energy
• ATP is used as the “currency” of photosynthesis
• ATP is generated via chemiosmosis
• Light energy can be used by photosynthetic archaea and bacteria to make ATP
• Photosynthetic bacteria can use light to make reductants (NADPH)