A 2026 laboratory study found that phosphite reacting with solid palladium can produce phosphate and hydrogen in water, while palladium-containing catalysts can also phosphorylate biologically relevant molecules. The results suggest a possible geochemical precursor to ATP-related chemistry, but they do not show that the reactions occurred in natural vents or powered the first life.
What the 2026 study found
In a paper first published in The FEBS Journal on 29 September 2026, researchers tested phosphite (HPO₃²⁻), a reduced form of phosphorus, with solid native palladium. They reported that palladium catalyzed phosphite oxidation to phosphate and hydrogen in water at temperatures from 25 to 100 °C. Palladium awaruite—an alloy of palladium, nickel and iron—also catalyzed phosphite-dependent phosphorylation.
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Phosphorylation is the addition of a phosphate group to a molecule. The team reported phosphorylated glycerol, ribose, glucose, serine and cytidine, alongside products including pyrophosphate, polyphosphates, ADP, phosphocreatine and acetyl phosphate. The authors proposed that an unidentified reactive intermediate, possibly metaphosphate, could explain the phosphorylation reactions; its identity has not been established.
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The results varied substantially across reactions and conditions. These reported yields describe separate experiments, not one overall efficiency:
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| Reaction | Reported result and condition |
|---|---|
| AMP to ADP | 5.9% conversion after 18 hours at 50 °C. |
| Cytidine to cytidine 5′-monophosphate | About 0.37% yield under a reported 30 °C, 72-hour condition. |
| Ribose phosphorylation | 0.6% yield. |
| Glucose phosphorylation | 1.1% yield. |
| Serine phosphorylation | Approximately 49.5% yield after 18 hours at 50 °C with Pd/C. |
| Acetyl phosphate formation | 8% yield overnight at 25 °C. |
The figures are tied to different substrates, catalysts and experimental conditions. They should not be added together or treated as evidence that a natural vent would produce the same yields.
Why the natural-vent connection remains uncertain
The authors say phosphite itself has not yet been reported in hydrothermal vent effluent. They were motivated in part by earlier reports of phosphite in serpentinized rocks and phosphite-oxidizing genes in microbes from serpentinizing systems. The paper cites earlier work reporting that phosphite made up 20%–50% of total phosphorus in some serpentinized rock samples; that range is background evidence, not a result of the new experiments.
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So the experiments show that the tested phosphorus compound and metal catalysts can drive phosphorylation in laboratory water-based reactions. They do not establish that phosphite and the catalysts occur together at suitable concentrations in ancient vents, that the reactions proceeded there at useful rates, or that the resulting compounds could sustain an evolving metabolic system.
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ATP is the principal energy-carrying molecule in modern cells, but this study did not demonstrate that early organisms obtained ATP through the proposed route. It produced ADP and other phosphorylated compounds, including acetyl phosphate, under laboratory conditions. The authors’ broader interpretation is that phosphite plus small catalytic amounts of palladium could represent a naturally formed geochemical precursor of ATP. That is a proposed implication of the chemistry, not a direct observation of ATP production in a natural setting or of life’s origin.
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The paper’s abstract calls the reactions “facile” under serpentinizing hydrothermal vent conditions. That description refers to the authors’ experimental reactions; it does not resolve whether the required phosphite was present in vent effluent or whether the chemistry could form a sustained prebiotic pathway.
How this differs from vent pH-gradient proposals
This work focuses on redox chemistry: phosphite is oxidized with the help of native-metal catalysts, and phosphorylation products form. It is distinct from the separate proposal that natural pH gradients across inorganic vent membranes powered early prebiotic chemistry. A 2016 critical review challenged assumptions about whether thin inorganic membranes at Lost City could maintain sharp gradients and questioned proposed prebiotic molecular machines. That critique addresses the pH-gradient hypothesis, not the phosphite-and-palladium experiments.
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What would strengthen the case
The key next step is to establish whether the ingredients and conditions align in a natural vent environment, then determine whether the chemistry can do more than make isolated products. A stronger origin-of-life explanation would need to connect plausible environmental inputs and catalysts to sustained reactions relevant to metabolism. The 2026 study supplies experimental evidence for a possible phosphorylation route, but leaves those broader questions open.
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