Abstract
Since the pioneering experimental work performed by Urey and Miller around 70 years ago, several experimental works have been developed for approaching the question of the origin of life based on very few well-constructed hypotheses. In recent years, attention has been drawn to the so-called alkaline hydrothermal vents model (AHV model) for the emergence of life. Since the first works, perspectives from complexity sciences, bioenergetics and thermodynamics have been incorporated into the model. Consequently, a high number of experimental works from the model using several tools have been developed. In this review, we present the key concepts that provide a background for the AHV model and then analyze the experimental approaches that were motivated by it. Experimental tools based on hydrothermal reactors, microfluidics and chemical gardens were used for simulating the environments of early AHVs on the Hadean Earth (~4.0 Ga). In addition, it is noteworthy that several works used techniques from electrochemistry to investigate phenomena in the vent–ocean interface for early AHVs. Their results provided important parameters and details that are used for the evaluation of the plausibility of the AHV model, and for the enhancement of it.
Highlights
In this review, we focus on describing and analyzing the experimental works designed to test an important hypothesis for the origin of life that was developed by the end of the 1980s: the alkaline hydrothermal vent model (AHV model), or submarine vent theory
It is based on a top-down approach that suggests that ancient levels of the phylogenetic tree are extensively composed of chemoautotrophs and thermophilic (considering that the first main references on the theory of surface metabolism mention examples of the prokaryotes whose optimal growth occurs at temperatures above 80 ◦ C, it is more adequate to use the term “hyperthermophilic”, according to the Encyclopedia of Astrobiology (2015) [45]) organisms [27]
Besides the development of its conceptual framework, the Alkaline hydrothermal vents (AHVs) model has been experimentally tested since the beginning
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. In this review, we focus on describing and analyzing the experimental works designed to test an important hypothesis for the origin of life that was developed by the end of the 1980s: the alkaline hydrothermal vent model (AHV model), or submarine vent theory. This model is noteworthy because of its multidisciplinary conceptual framework and the resulting variety of experimental approaches that are based on it. The main objective of this review, as mentioned above, is to provide an overall perspective of the experimental approaches based on the AHV model for the EoL on the early Earth. We will detail the described experimental approaches, their setup and key results, as well as the trends for future works
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