Metal Ions and the Route to Life (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781032606156)

Wolfgang Nitschke obtained his Diploma in Physics and his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Regensburg (Germany). He then worked as a post-doctoral fellow (on grants from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, the CEA and EMBO) with A. W. (Bill) Rutherford, Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique (Saclay, France) and with Pierre Joliot, Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique (Paris/France), followed by a position as Assistant Professor at the Albert-Ludwigs-University's Institut für Biologie (Freiburg/Germany). In 1995, he obtained a permanent position at the CNRS in the laboratory Bioenergetics and Protein Engineering (Marseille/France) where he founded and headed the research group "Evolution of Bioenergetics". This group investigates the bioenergetic processes of phylogenetically diverse microorganisms with the aim of elucidating evolutionary pathways from early to extant life and of discerning common, conserved patterns informing on the bioenergetic processes likely to have operated in the earliest forms of life on our planet. Over the last 5 years, the group has extended its research activities towards characterizing mineral-based processes potentially representing abiotic precursors of crucial reaction schemes in living systems.

Simon Duval is a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Marseille, France, since 2018, where he is part of a team focused on the evolution of bioenergetics. He earned his PhD from Aix-Marseille University, where he studied the redox properties and evolution of molybdenum enzymes, in particular arsenite oxidase. Following his PhD, Simon pursued several postdoctoral projects, mostly investigating electron transfer in metalloproteins. Notably, he spent two years at Utah State University (Logan, USA) with Professor Lance Seefeldt, where he explored the properties of Fe-nitrogenase using spectroscopic and biochemical methods.