I'm proposing that life originated between the sheets of mica, which are held together by K+, and that this is the source of the high intracellular [K+] in living cells. What are your thoughts about this?
Selected pubs:
1. H G Hansma, Possible Origin of Life between Mica Sheets. J Theor Biol 2010. 266, 175-188.
2. H. Greenwood Hansma, Did Biology Emerge from Biotite in Micaceous Clay?, Preprints, 2020090409
http://web.physics.ucsb.edu/~hhansma/HGHpublications.htm
Dear Helen Hansma many thanks for your interesting technical question. Even though I'm an inorganic chemist I personally never thought about this. According to the article cited below the involvement of the potassium cation (K+) is somewhat mysterious for most scenarios of origins of life. Please have a look at the relevant article entitled
Why Nature Chose Potassium
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00239-019-09915-2?shared-article-renderer
The following paper might also be helpful in this respect:
Ancient Systems of Sodium/Potassium Homeostasis as Predecessors of Membrane Bioenergetics
Article Ancient Systems of Sodium/Potassium Homeostasis as Predecess...
This article is freely available as public full text on RG.
Good luck with your research and best wishes!
Thanks Frank T. Edelmann - I know those 2 articles - I'll look more closely at the 2nd one.
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