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Potassium at the Origins of Life: Did Biology Emerge From Biotite in Micaceous Clay?
Version 1
: Received: 31 December 2021 / Approved: 4 January 2022 / Online: 4 January 2022 (20:36:31 CET)
A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.
Hansma, H.G. Potassium at the Origins of Life: Did Biology Emerge from Biotite in Micaceous Clay? Life 2022, 12, 301. Hansma, H.G. Potassium at the Origins of Life: Did Biology Emerge from Biotite in Micaceous Clay? Life 2022, 12, 301.
Abstract
Intracellular potassium concentrations, [K+], are high in all types of living cells, but the origins of this K+ are unknown. The simplest hypothesis is that life emerged in an environment that was high in K+. One such environment is the spaces between the sheets of the clay mineral, mica. The best mica for life’s origins is the black mica, biotite, because it has a high content of Mg++ and it has iron in various oxidation states. Life also has many of the characteristics of the environment between mica sheets, giving further support for the possibility that mica was the substrate on and within which life emerged.
Keywords
clay; mica; biotite; muscovite; origin of life; abiogenesis; mechanical energy; work; wet-dry cycles
Subject
Biology and Life Sciences, Biophysics
Copyright: This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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