bio

Wood-Ljungdahl pathway

The carbon-fixation route generally taken to be the most ancient still in use: reducing carbon dioxide directly with hydrogen to make acetyl-CoA, using iron-sulfur and nickel clusters as its catalytic centres. What makes it striking for the origin problem is that the overall reaction releases energy — it runs downhill — and the mineral clusters that catalyse it closely resemble the minerals that precipitate naturally in the walls of alkaline vents.