Konstanz biologists have made a fascinating discovery involving a phosphorus-based bacterial metabolism that is both new and ancient. The story of this discovery involves a calculation made in the 1980s, a sewage plant, a newly found bacterial organism, and a remnant from approximately 2.5 billion years ago.
The narrative begins in the late 1980s with a scientist who made a calculation on a sheet of paper. The calculation showed that the conversion of phosphite to phosphate could release enough energy to produce the cell’s energy carrier, the ATP molecule. This meant that it was possible for a microorganism to generate its own energy without relying on light or the decomposition of organic matter, unlike most other organisms on Earth.
The scientist successfully isolated such a microorganism from the environment. Its energy metabolism is based on the oxidation of phosphite to phosphate, just as the calculation had predicted. However, the biochemical mechanism behind this process remained a mystery for many years because the key enzyme needed to understand it remained hidden.
For the next three decades, the sheet of paper remained in a drawer, and the research on this topic was put on hold. However, the scientist couldn’t stop thinking about it. The scientist in question is Bernhard Schink, a professor at the Limnological Institute of the University of Konstanz. After three decades, an unexpected discovery reignited the research.
2023-11-10 11:41:04
Link from phys.org