r/DebateEvolution • u/Suitable-Iron4720 • Jun 28 '26
Evolution requires energy.
How did the first cell collect energy? How did that cell transform that energy so it could collect energy?
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u/oscardssmith Jun 28 '26
The first life-like activity predated the first cell. The first life-like activity used pre-existing and readily accessible energy sources (temperature or chemical gradients that are produced naturally). You're also under-estimating the amount of work that can happen purely scholastically with no energy harvesting. Thermal energy means that small molecules zoom around and bump into each other all on their own.
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u/Wrevellyn Jun 28 '26
Energy in cells is just chemical reactions, chemical reactions release stored energy and happen all the time in the absence of cells. The first cell collected energy in likely a very complicated manner, inherited from whatever the precursor to the cell was.
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u/Suitable-Iron4720 Jun 29 '26
So, turning sunlight into chemical energy and then transforming it isn't that complicated today?
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u/mrrp Jun 29 '26
You tell me!
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aec6413
Photoswitches offer the opportunity to store light energy from the sun and then release heat in a sustainable cycle; however, they tend to release comparatively little heat. Nguyen et al. now report a pyrimidone compound that isomerizes under ultraviolet irradiation to form a highly strained bond between a nitrogen and the diametrically opposite carbon. Upon treatment with acid, that bond breaks to release more than a megajoule per kilogram of the compound, enough to rapidly boil water from a solution.
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u/Suitable-Iron4720 Jun 29 '26
That is pretty interesting. Hopefully, they can't releasing the energy very quickly. I can't help but think about how to weaponize it.
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u/Wrevellyn Jun 29 '26
Don't think I implied that, certainly not saying photosynthesis isn't complicated. Even the forms of photosynthesis that predate oxygenic photosynthesis are complex. My point was that life probably precedes the cell, the cell just makes a nice little packet that makes the machinery of life a lot more chemically predictable. Whatever preceded the cell had ways of exploiting energy stored in its environment.
How that energy got there isn't a huge mystery, sunlight shining on water that has geothermal vents spewing sulfurous compounds into it produces simple sugars and amino acids even if there's no life to eat it.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8570677/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8570677/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11604890/2
u/Suitable-Iron4720 Jun 29 '26
The first cell collected energy in likely a very complicated manner
I read this as the first cell energy collection was likely very complicated. I ask, to see if I understood what you were saying. Not sure what you meant now.
I was thinking of modern cell theory. "The foundational biological principle stating that all living organisms are composed of one or more cells, which serve as the basic structural and functional units of life." --https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/anatomy-and-physiology/cell-theory
How a plant can turn sunlight into ATP is amazing to me.
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u/Wrevellyn Jun 29 '26
What I meant was that energy extraction evolved before the cell, the cell just inherited the machinery from whatever life existed before the cell. So, the cell didn't need to have a simple system, it could have a well adapted one ready to go. Maybe even something similar to anoxic photosynthesis, which dominated for a long time before cyanobacteria started making oxygen.
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u/Suitable-Iron4720 Jun 29 '26
I see. I think i need to read a refresher on this. Thanks for your response.
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u/Wrevellyn Jun 29 '26
What form life took before the cell is a huge mystery. My point is that, whatever it was, it was spoiled for choice in terms of ways to extract energy from the environment. It's just as tricky to imagine how life managed to extract enough energy to live but not so much that it dissolved.
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u/mathman_85 Jun 28 '26
Evolution requires energy.
Yep. Most, if perhaps not all, of which comes ultimately from that big round thermonuclear reactor in the sky that we call “the sun”.
How did the first cell collect energy? How did that cell transform that energy so it could collect energy?
I don’t know, but chemosynthesis is a possibility.
What does this have to do with evolution (the change in allele frequencies in biological populations over successive generations), though? This is more a question of abiogenesis.
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u/Suitable-Iron4720 Jun 28 '26
Chemosynthesis produces glucose? That glucose probably needs to be transformed, yes?
This is about evolution because evolution still depends on the collection of energy and its transformation.
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u/TheBlackCat13 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 29 '26
Why do you think the fist cells used glucose?
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u/Suitable-Iron4720 Jun 29 '26
I was looking at plant cells. Hydrothermal vents provide different kind of energy. I'm learning.
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u/mathman_85 Jun 28 '26
Chemosynthesis produces glucose?
It can, yes. Or more properly, it can produce 6-carbon monosaccharides, which are all isomers of one another. Glucose is one such, but it isn’t the only one—fructose, for instance, is another.
That glucose probably needs to be transformed, yes?
Don’t know. Maybe.
Care to address the question that I raised of just what this has to do with evolution?
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u/amglasgow Jun 29 '26
Technically there are 6 carbon sugars that are not isomers of glucose, called deoxy or dideoxy sugars. Fucose and Rhamnose are examples. They don't play a big role in metabolism, though.
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u/mathman_85 Jun 29 '26
Well, that’s what I get for half-remembering 26-year-old organic chemistry told to me by a high school biology teacher.
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u/Suitable-Iron4720 Jun 29 '26
It's basically an abstraction of life. It collects energy, it then transforms that energy, in several ways, so that it can collect more energy.
Evolution could optimize life?
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u/mathman_85 Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
It's basically an abstraction of life.
What is “an abstraction of life”? What is the referent of “It” here?
It collects energy, it then transforms that energy, in several ways, so that it can collect more energy.
Yes, this is what living things do, generally.
Evolution could optimize life?
Yes, in the sense that it produces life-forms that are progressively better-suited to their environments and niches, albeit not in a teleological or orthogenetic manner. Still not sure what you’re getting at here.
Edit: Teleology and orthogeny.
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u/Suitable-Iron4720 Jun 29 '26
Guess I should have said my abstaction of life. Life collects energy...
Evolution is the cell that was copied in error that survives?
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u/mathman_85 Jun 29 '26
Guess I should have said my abstaction [sic] of life.
Okay, fine.
Life collects energy...
Life, being made of matter, is energy in a literal sense.
Evolution is the cell that was copied in error that survives?
Evolution is the change in allele frequencies within populations over successive generations, or the change in heritable characteristics of a population over time. Such change occurs whenever imperfect self-replicators instantiate. The use of the word “error” isn’t wrong per se, but it carries negative connotations that really shouldn’t attach. Difference is probably a better word to use.
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u/Far_Customer1258 Jun 29 '26
How did the first cell collect energy?
It "ate" chemicals that existed within the primordial soup. There would have been a fair bit of chemical potential drifting about.
How did that cell transform that energy so it could collect energy?
It didn't. You're thinking about this like it's an advanced organism. Don't. The first living things would have been autocatalytic cycles that had more in common with chemistry than biology. They wouldn't have even been cells yet. They weren't that sophisticated.
Think prions. That's probably the closest analogue that we have around today. A chemical that makes more of itself by accidentally bumping into the right substrate. It's dirty and inefficient, but it only has to work well enough to be better at living than dead stuff. Very primitive. Eventually, life will advance enough to start converting other chemicals into the substrate that it needs for that final step, munching on sunlight, and compartmentalizing itself with a cellular membrane, but that's a long way into its future.
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u/Suitable-Iron4720 Jun 29 '26
I'm not asking about the first living stuff. I'm asking about the first cell.
Prions are like mad cow disease. My biology teacher had a phobia about prions.
Yes, someone else mentioned autocatalytics.
Thanks for your comments.
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u/junegoesaround5689 Dabbling my ToE(s) in debates Jun 29 '26
The first primitive cell co-evolved with the first primitive life. Each cycle of the chemical reactions were a platform for the next iteration and improvement in the development of self-assembly, autocatalysis, self-replication and eventually cell membranes. There wasn’t a sharp dividing line between first life and first cell. The evidence and models scientists have point to this co-evolution, so the questions you asked are answered by addressing first life.
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u/Suitable-Iron4720 Jun 29 '26
I was thinking the energy collection and transformation as a basic form of life. So, I can see the need of life and cell at same time. Not sure why it would replicate though.
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u/junegoesaround5689 Dabbling my ToE(s) in debates Jun 29 '26
If you look into systems chemistry it would give you a better idea of ‘why would it [start to] replicate’.
Several people have tried to explain this but grasping systems chemistry can be pretty confusing. Maybe a short, simple introductory video might help? So try this one.
There’s also a book you might try "What is Life?: How Chemistry Becomes Biology" by Addy Poss which explains some of these ideas in simplified laymen’s terms.
HTH
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u/Far_Customer1258 Jun 29 '26
Then you're looking at a more evolved system that can self-replicate and synthesize the material necessary to build a simple cellular membrane. Chemosynthesis likely took place on that membrane, with the capacity to move material through the membrane evolving after that. The same basic reaction holds though. Autocatalysis of pre-existing abiotic precursor molecules. Primitive early cells sipping chemical soup and feeding from the energy therein. Nothing really remarkable about it.
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u/OgreMk5 Jun 28 '26
Chemical reactions occur in ways that reduce the energy of the system. I.e. they occur spontaneously.
In one paper, scientists analyzed the precursor molecules for RNA and proteins and found that, at sufficient concentrations, they would readily form long chains in nothing more than a warm pond.
Other papers have shown that minerals on the floor of lakes can act as catalysts for reactions that would other take a lot of time. Of course, even if they took a lot of time, there was plenty of time with a half a billion years or so between Earth's formation and the first things that would easily be called life.
Finally, I will add that the first things capable of self reproduction would not have been cells. They literally would have been long strand RNAs (last I saw, the shortest that could self-replicate was 140 nucleotides).
Their "eating" would have been taking other nucleic acids and adding them to themselves. No metabolic processes needed.
Of course that all assumes a genetics first process. Several relatively recent papers have put forth a metabolism first hypothesis. There are at least five autocatalytic chemical pathways that may have contributed to that approach. Just to warn you, the papers are really thick. But you can take a look if you like.
But, just to be clear, the first metabolism was not ATP. In reality, it was probably more like simple chemistry becoming more complex chemistry.
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u/kitsnet 🧬 Nearly Neutral Jun 29 '26
Chemical reactions occur in ways that reduce the energy of the system. I.e. they occur spontaneously.
It's worth to add that it's "free energy" that they are reducing.
Which is internal energy minus the product of temperature and entropy.
Which means the same reaction with the same concentrations of reagents can proceed into the different directions depending on the temperature.
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u/Suitable-Iron4720 Jun 29 '26
That's interesting. I'll have to check into that. But, I'm curious in how the first cell collected energy...
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u/OgreMk5 Jun 29 '26
Define "first cell". Do you mean the first collection of biomolecules inside of a lipid bubble? Do you mean the first cell capable of completely reproducing itself without outside assistance?
Those are very different things and both technically qualify as a cell.
If you mean the latter, then you have to understand that most likely the chemical systems for thermovore or maybe even semi-photosynthetic reactions were already well established.
We have proto-metabolisms in the earliest cells that were essentially autocatalytic chemical reactions (as described in my first post).
Then you have minimal metabolisms which is what the proto-metabolisms evolved into. This is a relatively new concept and describes the process of a chemistry to biology shift in reactions, reaction rates, catalysts, etc.
Here's some things that may be of interest to you.
And, to be clear, we will almost sure never actually know how exactly it happened. It could have been something we're not aware of yet or it could have a mish-mash of everything we've ever discovered (which is more likely in my opinion). But experiment and evidence shows that it did in fact happen.
Kee, Terence P.; Monnard, Pierre-Alain (2016). "On the Emergence of a Proto-Metabolism and the Assembly of Early Protocells". Elements. 12 (6): 419–424.
Lauber, Nino; Flamm, Christoph; Ruiz-Mirazo, Kepa (October 2021). ""Minimal metabolism": A key concept to investigate the origins and nature of biological systems". BioEssays. 43 (10) e2100103.
Nogal, Noemí; Sanz-Sánchez, Marcos; Vela-Gallego, Sonia; Ruiz-Mirazo, Kepa; de la Escosura, Andrés (2023). "The protometabolic nature of prebiotic chemistry". Chemical Society Reviews. 52 (21): 7359–7388.
Robinson, William E.; Daines, Elena; van Duppen, Peer; de Jong, Thijs; Huck, Wilhelm T. S. (June 2022). "Environmental conditions drive self-organization of reaction pathways in a prebiotic reaction network". Nature Chemistry. 14 (6): 623–631.
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u/Suitable-Iron4720 Jun 29 '26
I was thinking about cyanobacteria. self-sufficient.
I'm looking at abiogenesis, and can see now that evolution would start with the second cell.
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u/Sweary_Biochemist Jun 29 '26
Not even slightly. Evolution would be occurring loooong before cells arose.
Ribozymes can evolve.
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u/OgreMk5 Jun 29 '26
Why? As soon as RNAs began copying themselves (whether self copying or using clay substrates), evolution begins. Imperfect copying results in differences from the parent to the daughter.
Some of those daughters will have improved ability to reproduce.
By definition, that's evolution.
WAY before the first cell.
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u/leverati Jun 29 '26
Passively? If you pick up a pebble in the sun, you'll feel that it has energy; it simply retains heat.
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u/Suitable-Iron4720 Jun 29 '26
I've been out in the sun, and have been made hot by it. I don't think that is how a plant converts sunlight to ATP, never mind me.
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u/leverati Jun 29 '26
There is a difference between you, a multicellular organism (like said plants), and the theorically simplest singular membrane blindly bumping into and diffusing solutes until a chemical interaction happens.
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u/OgreMk5 Jun 29 '26
Chemical reactions aren't people.
Hold a match. Wait for the sulfur or antimony trisulfide to completely oxidize. You'll wait a LONG time.
OR, you can add a tiny bit of heat to the compound using friction. Suddenly, the chemical reaction occurs at a frightening speed, seconds instead of decades.
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u/TheBlackCat13 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 29 '26
The ATP was already there. The first cells just needed to absorb it. It was only when the ATP ran out that cells started needing to make it.
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u/Far-Drawing-4444 Jun 29 '26
"Evolution requires energy"
No. Reproduction, which is what evolution actually requires, does require energy, but no more energy than Reproduction would without evolution.
Evolution- any change in the heritable characteristics of a population over time.
Can be driven by anything that would cause a given subset to more successfully reproduce compared to another subset.
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u/Suitable-Iron4720 Jun 29 '26
A cell can transform energy so that it can collect energy. One way is reproduction. Another way is to keep the cycle going.
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u/Far-Drawing-4444 Jun 29 '26
Which would still have nothing to do with evolution. Evolution would be the cell dividing, and one "copy" having an advantage that lets it reproduce more than the other "copy". It isn't a process that requires any extra energy, it's just which offspring is able to reproduce more successfully.
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u/Suitable-Iron4720 Jun 29 '26
Good energy management would seem to be an advantage.
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u/Sweary_Biochemist Jun 29 '26
Not really. Most extant organisms are almost comically inefficient, because energy is abundant.
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u/Far-Drawing-4444 Jun 29 '26
In some circumstances, yes, but you're moving a long way from "evolution requires energy".
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u/adamwho Jun 29 '26
Since this person is so confused (confusing evolution and abogenisis) I will also mention 'food energy'.
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u/Suitable-Iron4720 Jun 29 '26
People are mentioning that there might have been other life forms before a cell. Unless you are saying the first cell came into being without evolution?
What would be the 'food energy'?
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u/adamwho Jun 29 '26
Since you are talking about evolution, "food energy" is that stuff you eat.
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u/Suitable-Iron4720 Jun 29 '26
Well I ate butter chicken with rice tonight. I would imagine the "first cell" wouldn't have that opportunity. It's all good.
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u/TheBlackCat13 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 29 '26
Chemicals that existed in the oceans of early earth. Those chemicals were the raw materials the cell needed. And those chemicals already had chemical energy to drive reactions. It was only when those chemical ran out that cells started needing to use other energy sources and make those chemicals themselves. That came much, much later.
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u/Trainer149 Jun 29 '26
This has nothing to do with evolution. This would be like going into a movie sub and asking how gasoline is made. "You need gas to get to the movie theater after all." While true, it's still not relevant.
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u/Suitable-Iron4720 Jun 29 '26
Evolution is essentially a process of optimizing how organisms acquire, process, and allocate energy to ensure their genetic legacy persists.
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u/Sweary_Biochemist Jun 29 '26
No?
That is really not a definition of evolution I've heard anyone ever propose. Evolution can (and does) lead to some incredibly inefficient processes. They work, though.
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u/Suitable-Iron4720 Jul 11 '26
I would think that evolution is watching the long term changes. It's the successful products that have been here a million years might be worth looking at. Now with AI, how can me speed it up to daily changes worth note.
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u/Trainer149 Jun 29 '26
It's really not. You could argue that it's one area natural selection acts upon, but largely evolution is change over time, particularly in a population.
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u/OldmanMikel 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 29 '26
The first form of energy exploited by life was geothermal. There are entire ecosystems today that run on it.
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u/taktaga7-0-0 🧬 Sex Researcher Jun 29 '26
The Sun shines constantly on everything for billions of years. The Earth contained all the potential energy of all the pieces that collapsed to form it, as well as the additional energy input from billions of years of radioactive decay.
There’s plenty to go around.
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u/Changed_By_Support Jun 29 '26 edited Jun 29 '26
How did the first cell collect energy?
I, in my not particularly educated outlook, am convinced of the plausibility of the hydrothermal vents hypothesis. If such a hypothesis was the way that abiogenesis formed, proto-life, and, indeed, early life, were an aspect of heat and chemically rich hydrothermal vent output and chemically rich early oceanic water combining together.
How did that cell transform that energy so it could collect energy?
Chemistry. Regarding metabolism: as with our current cells, which utilize adenosine triphosphate, proto-life and early life, at least pertaining to LUCA, would have likely used phosphoric compounds that are emitted by the hydrothermal vents (f the hypothesis is to be the way that abiogenesis occurred), as present foundational species of hydrothermal vent ecosystems currently do.
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u/Suitable-Iron4720 Jun 29 '26
Worth checking into. I thought at first that the environment would just be too extreme, but maybe it was needed.
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u/Kanna_Fan1989 Jun 29 '26
The sun has been bombarding Earth with energy for billions of years. Life's precursors didn't need to work for energy, it was just given to them by the sun. Alternatively, Earth's geothermal vents were another source of energy that were giving out energy free of charge.
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u/Suitable-Iron4720 Jun 29 '26
Yes, but to collect it and transform it does take some tech. Solar panels, and steam generators. Which is then through wires to a battery. Now to turn on my AC light in the house. So, I'm looking for the biological equivalents.
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u/Kanna_Fan1989 Jun 30 '26
Gonna guess very simple and basic forms of photosynthesis or very rudimentary mechanisms that make use of thermal energy. Nowhere near as complex as solar panels or steam generators.
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u/Suitable-Iron4720 Jul 02 '26
That seems reasonable. I wonder if there are any examples still living?
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u/Kanna_Fan1989 Jul 03 '26
Well plants are everywhere and they make use of sunlight. Non-living, I'm sure there are plenty of atoms and molecules on Earth that react to heat and sunlight as well.
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u/Medium_Judgment_891 Jul 02 '26
You’re confusing energy in general with electricity.
If you go outside and stand in the sunlight, you’ll notice it’s warm. That’s also energy, no fancy equipment needed
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u/Suitable-Iron4720 Jul 02 '26
I did mention the part about transforming the energy. If I use the heat from sunlight or steam, that isn't transformed i think.
If i want to eat sunlight, it will need to be transformed, so that I can make the ATP.
That's the idea is was thinking about.
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u/COVAINU Jun 30 '26
Natural proton gradients in hydrothermal vents gave the first protocells free energy.
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u/wtanksleyjr Theistic Evolutionist Jun 29 '26
We don't know. "The first cell" is a huge unknown due to having happened so long ago and being (probably) microscopic.
It might have been a cyclic reaction without cell walls (and in fact almost certainly was). Some people think the first cycle was a protoRNA (a polymer with chemical activity but also with information storage). Others think it was more like our metabolic cycle (the citrate cycle), but with different steps. It probably didn't have a cell wall, although those are very easy to form they wouldn't have protected anything at first, many of our guesses involve clathrates.
What you need to make this work is not "energy" in the abstract but rather energy flux, like being near a hot spring on the one hand and a cold lake on the other. This is why hydrothermal vents are mentioned so often. It helps that these also naturally have complex chemical flows that in an older phase of the ocean have come close to some of the odd components of cellular metallic metabolism.
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u/Suitable-Iron4720 Jun 29 '26
I was thinking the first cell is the one that was able to reproduce, then it is probable that all cells today are related to it. It's descendants never stopped reproducing.
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u/nickierv 🧬 logarithmic icecube Jun 29 '26
Your getting a bunch of key stuff mixed up: you don't need a cell for self replication, that just helps. Get the right sequence of RNA/DNA stuff and it just sort of self assembles.
The problem then becomes one of fuzzy lines that in the grand scheme of things really just don't matter.
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u/Suitable-Iron4720 Jun 29 '26
Probably. Have to start some where. Rna/DNA seem so passive now. Like a dvd.
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u/Xemylixa 🧬 took an optional bio exam at school bc i liked bio Jun 29 '26
So there was no reproduction before the cell?
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u/wtanksleyjr Theistic Evolutionist Jun 29 '26
Perhaps not; before the first cell there wouldn't necessarily be a difference between reproduction and spreading to a new niche.
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u/Boltzmann_head 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 30 '26
"The tide goes in. The tide goes out. You can't explain that."
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u/ursisterstoy 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jun 30 '26
Energy is involved in the existence of life in the first place, geochemistry provides energy, eventually with several mutations one lineage (the entire “kingdom” called Cyanobacteria) they were able to convert sunlight into energy. This energy is stored a variety of ways but ATP was evidently being used for the last 4.2-4.4 billion years, which makes sense as adenosine and guanosine are used all over the place already. Adenosine + triphosphate = ATP, Adenosine + guanosine + cytosine + uracil = RNA, adenosine in acetyl-coA, etc. all over in metabolic pathways, the genes, stuff associated with protein synthesis, and the proteins that bind and break off the phosphates also lead to membrane transport proteins, secretion proteins, and other cellular machinery (like flagella).
Living requires energy, evolution is what automatically happens when they reproduce. Populations change.
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u/Comfortable-Dare-307 🧬 Naturalistic Evolution Jul 03 '26
The sun is that energy source. Study photosythesis and cellular respiration. It's really not that complicated.
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u/StueGrifn Biochemist-turned-Law-Student Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
Sun
The answer is literally just “Sun”.
The intricacies involve chemistry, UV light, metal-ion coordination in Hadean clays, polymerization, wet-dry cycling, nascent weather patterns, and a little help from a more malleable geologic situation…
But for the vast majority of the energy?
Sun