Thinking about group transfer potential at the emergence of metabolism

In modern cells, metabolic fluxes focus disequilibria into a pool of molecules with high group-transfer potential, which in turn drive the reactions that support growth. How does this system operate today, and how might it have changed since life’s origins? To explore these questions, I will discuss three research approaches. First, I’ll explore the extent that we can understand group transfer potential from the perspective of orthologous genes and their evolution. Second, I’ll discuss an orthogonal approach which relies on metabolic network expansion, which can motivate hypotheses of how metabolism may have been built out. Finally, I’ll move into chemical thermodynamics and kinetics, which perhaps can provide some harder constraints on molecular availabilities and reactions in different early Earth environments.