Our present chemical interpretation of nature, which neglects nuclear activity in the normal ambient temperature world, could be incomplete. However the scientific community have rejected evidences of cold nuclear fusions, which resembles transmutation of the alchemists. If cold nuclear activity could occur in nature, it could be important in some ecological processes.
I'm not sure I understand really this question while I understand what point you want to adress.
For weird and funky metabolisms that have been extensively studied, because it's easy, we should take a look at microorganisms I say.
Chemical reactions close to thermodynamic limits do exist in microbial ecology and theyr are rather common because they allow access to specific ecological niches.
Collimonas spp. strains are weathering mineral (and other normally very reluctant substrates, such as chitin for example) at a very low rate. Though they occupy a very specific and dedicated niche making them nonetheless essential primary producers (of cations mainly).
I suggest the following reading: Jackson, B. E., and McInerney, M. J. (2002). Anaerobic microbial metabolism can proceed close to thermodynamic limits. Nature 415, 454–456.
I think that any (environmental) microbiologist going into a debate about what may or may not exist will be wrong at some point. We must acknowledge that our understanding of microbial diversity in complex environmental matrices, such as soil for example is currently very very very limited. Looking at genetic diversity alone, we are close to know nothing and neither are we able to actually dig up most of this diversity.
Yet, how far are we in 2014 from what is stated in this report from US Department of Energy on LENR ?
http://www.fas.org/irp/dia/lenr.pdf
If physicians are still strugglng to understand and eventually define these phenomenom, how can one identify it in nature, based on observations?
Dear Joseph I'm asking about transmutation of one element to another. For instance, from sodium to calcium.
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