Ingredients for microbial life preserved in 3.5 billion-year-old fluid inclusions

Helge Mißbach (), Jan-Peter Duda, Alfons M. Kerkhof, Volker Lüders, Andreas Pack, Joachim Reitner and Volker Thiel
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Helge Mißbach: University of Göttingen
Jan-Peter Duda: University of Göttingen
Alfons M. Kerkhof: University of Göttingen
Volker Lüders: GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Telegrafenberg
Andreas Pack: University of Göttingen
Joachim Reitner: University of Göttingen
Volker Thiel: University of Göttingen

Nature Communications, 2021, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract It is widely hypothesised that primeval life utilised small organic molecules as sources of carbon and energy. However, the presence of such primordial ingredients in early Earth habitats has not yet been demonstrated. Here we report the existence of indigenous organic molecules and gases in primary fluid inclusions in c. 3.5-billion-year-old barites (Dresser Formation, Pilbara Craton, Western Australia). The compounds identified (e.g., H2S, COS, CS2, CH4, acetic acid, organic (poly-)sulfanes, thiols) may have formed important substrates for purported ancestral sulfur and methanogenic metabolisms. They also include stable building blocks of methyl thioacetate (methanethiol, acetic acid) – a putative key agent in primordial energy metabolism and thus the emergence of life. Delivered by hydrothermal fluids, some of these compounds may have fuelled microbial communities associated with the barite deposits. Our findings demonstrate that early Archaean hydrothermal fluids contained essential primordial ingredients that provided fertile substrates for earliest life on our planet.

Date: 2021
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-21323-z

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