Electrochemistry

Passthecream posted this link in comments which is a nice listen to Nick Lane explaining his ideas to a non biochemistry audience. I enjoyed it.

Youtube recalled that I watched it and suggested this similar item which also has some core concepts in it. This few minutes really caught my eye as it's something I've been think about for a long time. It's a reiteration of his ideas from pages p133 to 140 of Transformer with all of the doodles merged in to two slides

Although he does specify a negatively charged surface in the book, this doesn't get fitted in to the brief overview he presents in the talk. But this negative charge is fundamental to the chemistry being discussed. I've snapshotted the two slides and added in the supply of electrons needed for each step of the reaction, with a different colour for each electron or pair of electrons, all coming from the charged surface.

Aside. The two red ovals pick out a single, bound, negatively charged oxygen atom. If you're trying to keep the charges balanced it is helpful to realise that they are the same moiety illustrated in two places on different slides. End aside.

This is pure electrochemistry. I picked up a paper years ago which was looking at origin of life reactions driven by an external voltage. You can drive the sort of reactions Nick Lane is describing with a tenth of a 1.5 volt battery's potential. The beauty of vents is that they supply the battery.

A subgroup of industrial chemical engineers is well aware of this phenomenon and they are amazed that electrochemistry for organic carbon based molecular synthesis has never been commercialised. This abstract gives the flavour of their frustration

A Survival Guide for the "Electro-curious"

Understandable.

Peter