Martina Preiner receives an ERC Starting Grant
Max Planck researcher Dr Martina Preiner has been awarded by the European Research Council (ERC)
Martina Preiner is working on one of the biggest questions in research: How did life originate? With the ERC Starting Grant, the geochemist receives one of the most prestigious European grants for young researchers.
Martina Preiner is a research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology and the Microcosm Earth Center (MEC), a joint center of MPI-TM and the Marburg University. She explores the possible role of mineral environments in the origin of life at the interface between geology and biology.
When it comes to the question of how life can arise from non-life, there are essentially two research principles: 'bottom up' and 'top down'. The 'bottom-up' approach involves bringing simple minerals and geochemical reactions together to observe the resulting developments. The other approach, 'top-down', involves deconstructing complex life as we know it. The aim is to strip away the complexity, layer by layer, to uncover the core processes. Which chemical reactions extend far back into the past, and what was the common ancestor? Both approaches have already produced significant findings, but they are also limited in terms of what they can reveal.
The Role of Coenzymes in Life`s Evolution
There is indeed a huge leap from inanimate minerals to the highly complex enzymes that drive metabolic processes and make life possible. And yet there is a connection: Coenzymes are organic molecules that work with enzymes to enable biochemical reactions. According to some hypotheses, these comparatively simple 'assistants' could have been the precursors of enzymes, and therefore of the first metabolic processes.
Martina Preiner and her team at the Future Center Microcosm Earth (MEC) in Marburg, a joint centre of the MPI and Philipps University of Marburg, are investigating the interactions between coenzymes and minerals.
Specifically, she suspects that coenzymes played a central role in the transition from mineral CO₂ fixation to enzymatic carbon metabolism. 'Although coenzymes are much smaller than enzymes, they are still too complex to have simply emerged by chance from a geological system. It remains a great mystery how these molecules arose and developed into life-like systems.”
This question also directly relates to Martina Preiner's research within the “Microbes for Climate” (M4C) Cluster of Excellence, which among other topics focuses on the early evolution of biochemical CO2 fixation.
Research focus: early carbon fixation
With the ERC Starting Grant, Martina Preiner intends to focus on the arguably oldest carbon fixation pathway: the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway. This metabolic pathway uses electrons from hydrogen to fix CO₂. The reaction can also occur abiotically, i.e. without living cells. In this case, minerals serve as catalysts instead of enzymes.
In her experiments, Martina Preiner will combine the molecular components of the Wood-Ljungdahl pathway with mineral-assisted catalysis in order to gain insight into how metabolic functions could have evolved from geochemical reactions. As the first cells emerged, the initial interactions between geo- and biochemistry became separated and life developed into this complex biochemical network we know today. The ERC Starting Grant will enable us to shed light on the period before the separation. Studying the little-known interactions between chemically active environments and metabolic processes could reveal the mechanistic dependencies that existed before cells emerged, and perhaps provide insights into the origin of life”.
ERC Starting Grants are aimed at promising scientists who completed their PhD between two and seven years ago. They include a project budget of up to €1.5 million for a period of five years.
Dr. Martina Preiner studied chemistry and biochemistry at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. After receiving her Master's degree in physical chemistry, she build up a career as a Science journalist. She worked for various German media outlets for seven years before interviewing a researcher on the origin of life drew her back into the laboratory. For her doctorate at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf she studied the parallels between geochemical and biochemical CO2 fixation, during a Postdoc at Utrecht University and the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) she then got to travel to and investigate deep-sea hydrothermal systems. Since 2023 she is leading her own research group at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, focusing on organic cofactors to actively connect geochemical and biochemical CO2 fixation.
