Jihua Hao

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University of Science and Technology of China | USTC · Faculty of Geochemistry and Environment Science

The Cassini spacecraft revealed life-forming elements like CHNOP and diverse organic compounds from Enceladus's ocean. However, the availability of minor but bio-essential nutrients such as iron and sulfur remains unknown. Here, we perform geochemical modeling to explore their chemistry in Enceladus's ocean. We find that dissolved iron predominantl...

In Chinese freshwater lakes, eutrophication often coincides with heavy metal/metalloids (HM/Ms) pollution, yet the coevolution of critical nutrients (P, S, Se) and HM/Ms (Cd, Hg, etc.) remains understudied. To address this gap, we conducted a sedimentary chemistry analysis on a 30 cm-deep core, dating back approximately 200 years, retrieved from Ch...

The Cassini spacecraft detected a soup of organics in the plume of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Those compounds could provide building blocks for the potential emergence or sustenance of microbial life in Enceladus’ subsurface ocean. However, the sources and stabilities of organics in Enceladus’ ocean are still poorly understood. Here, we perform noneq...

The mid-Proterozoic, spanning 1.8 to 0.8 billion years ago, is recognized as a phase of marine anoxia, low marine primary productivity (MPP), and constrained eukaryotic biodiversity. However, emerging evidence suggesting intermittent environmental disturbances and concurrent eukaryotic evolution challenges the notion of a stagnant Earth during this...

Uranium (U) is an important global energy resource and a redox sensitive trace element that reflects changing environmental conditions and geochemical cycling. The redox evolution of U mineral chemistry can be interrogated to understand the formation and distribution of U deposits and the redox processes involved in U geochemistry throughout Earth...

The emergence of Darwinian evolution represents a central point in the history of life as we know it. However, it is generally assumed that the environments in which life appeared were hydrothermal environments, with highly variable conditions in terms of pH, temperature or redox levels. Are evolutionary processes favored to appear in such settings...

The atmospheric-oceanic circulation patterns, especially for the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) and El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), two major atmospheric circulation patterns in the Ross Sea region, have been reported to greatly affect climate and marine ecosystems. However, from a historical perspective, the influence of atmospheric-oceanic circ...

Of the six elements incorporated into the major polymers of life, phosphorus is the least abundant on a global scale [E. Anders, M. Ebihara, Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta 46, 2363-2380 (1982)] and has been described as the "ultimate limiting nutrient" [T. Tyrrell, Nature 400, 525-531 (1999)]. In the modern ocean, the supply of dissolved phosphorus is pr...

Hydroxy acids are prebiotic monomers that undergo dehydration synthesis to form polyester gels, which assemble into membraneless microdroplets upon aqueous rehydration. These microdroplets are proposed as protocells that can segregate and compartmentalize primitive molecules/reactions. Different primitive aqueous environments with a variety of salt...

The release of phosphorus (P) from crustal rocks during weathering plays a key role in determining the size of Earth's biosphere, yet the concentration of P in crustal rocks over time remains controversial. Here, we combine spatial, temporal, and chemical measurements of preserved rocks to reconstruct the lithological and chemical evolution of Eart...

A prerequisite for prebiotic chemistry is the accumulation of critical building blocks of life. Some studies argue that more frequent impact events on the primitive Earth could have induced a more reducing steam atmosphere and thus favor widespread and more efficient synthesis of life building blocks. However, elevated temperature is also proposed...

Titan hazes, and their laboratory analogs, named tholins, have been extensively studied in the laboratory. Previously, cold plasmas, such as radio frequency discharge, were the dominant plasma sources to produce energetic electrons and ions to simulate photoelectrons. In this work, the electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) discharge plasma was extende...

How simple abiotic organic compounds evolve toward more complex molecules of potentially prebiotic importance remains a missing key to establish where life possibly emerged. The limited variety of abiotic organics, their low concentrations and the possible pathways identified so far in hydrothermal fluids have long hampered a unifying theory of a h...

Terrestrial planet Venus has a similar size, mass, and bulk composition to Earth. Previous studies proposed that local plume-induced subduction existed on both early Earth and Venus, and this prototype subduction might initiate plate tectonics on Earth but not on Venus. In this study, we simulate the buoyancy of submerged slabs in a hypothesized 2-...

The Chang 7 member of Triassic Yanchang Formation in Ordos Basin is rich in shale oil resources. Among them, the Chang 73 sub-member has deposited a set of black shale with extraordinary high organic matter content and TOC content of 35.8%. It is an important strategic substitute for “exploring petroleum inside source kitchen” onshore in China. Bas...

Saturn’s moon Enceladus has a potentially habitable subsurface water ocean that contains canonical building blocks of life (organic and inorganic carbon, ammonia, possibly hydrogen sulfide) and chemical energy (disequilibria for methanogenesis). However, its habitability could be strongly affected by the unknown availability of phosphorus (P). Here...

Sulfur is an essential element of life that is assimilated by Earth's biosphere through the chemical breakdown of pyrite. On the early Earth, pyrite weathering by atmospheric oxygen was severely limited, and low marine sulfate concentrations persisted for much of the Archean eon. Here, we show an anoxic photochemical mechanism of pyrite weathering...

Phosphorus (P) chemistry and its dynamic cycling are essential for understanding aquatic primary productivity and ecosystem structure. However, there is a lack of knowledge on P chemistry in pristine aquatic ecosystems, such as in Antarctica. Here, we applied the Standards, Measurements and Testing Program (SMT) procedure and nuclear magnetic reson...

Earth surface redox conditions are intimately linked to the co-evolution of the geosphere and biosphere. Minerals provide a record of Earth’s evolving surface and interior chemistry in geologic time due to many different processes (e.g. tectonic, volcanic, sedimentary, oxidative, etc.). Here, we show how the bipartite network of minerals and their...

Terrestrial planets Venus and Earth have similar sizes, masses, and bulk compositions, but only Earth developed planetary-scale plate tectonics. Plate tectonics generates weatherable fresh rocks and transfers surface carbon back to Earth’s interior, which provides a long-term climate feedback, serving as a thermostat to keep Earth a habitable plane...

A boring billion for mountains Earth's crust has changed over time as supercontinents formed and broke apart. Tied into this cycle are the building and erosion of high mountains, which are tied to collisions between tectonic plates. Tang et al. use europium anomalies in zircons to estimate the mean thickness of crust over Earth's history. This prox...

The payload of Mars 2020 space mission includes a deep UV resonance Raman and fluorescence spectrometer SHERLOC dedicated to the detection of luminescence and Raman signal of condensed carbon and aromatic organics that could potentially be biosignatures. Among minerals detected on Mars surface, phyllosilicates exhibit a strong affinity to organic m...

Serpentinization refers to the alteration of ultramafic rocks that produces serpentines and secondary (hydr)oxides under hydrothermal conditions. Serpentinization can generate H2, which in turn can potentially reduce CO/CO2 and produce organic molecules via Fischer–Tropsch type (FTT) and Sabatier type reactions. Over the last two decades, serpentin...

Significance When oxygenic photosynthesis evolved is debated with an uncertainty of approximately 1 Gy. It is generally assumed that the oxidation of manganese minerals requires biological catalysis or molecular oxygen and therefore is often used as a proxy for the presence of oxygenic photosynthetic organisms. We show that anoxic, abiotic oxidatio...

The origin of methane and light hydrocarbons (HCs) in natural fluids from serpentinization has commonly been attributed to the abiotic reduction of oxidized carbon by H2 through Fischer-Tropsch-type (FTT) reactions. Multiple experimental serpentinization studies attempted to identify the parameters that control the abiotic production of H2, CH4, an...

Several lines of evidence point to low rates of net primary production (NPP) in Archean oceans. However, whether Archean NPP was limited by electron donors or nutrients, particularly phosphorus (P), and how these factors might have changed over a billion years of recorded Archean history, remains contentious. One major challenge is to understand qu...

The incorporation of metal cofactors into protein active sites and/or active regions expanded the network of microbial metabolism during the Archean eon. The bioavailability of crucial metal cofactors is largely influenced by earth surface redox state, which impacted the timing of metabolic evolution. Vanadium (V) is a unique element in geo-bio-coe...

Phosphorus (P) is the key nutrient thought to limit primary productivity on geological timescales. Phosphate levels in Archean marine sediments are low, but quantification of the P cycle and how it changed through a billion years of recorded Archean history remain a challenge, hindering our understanding of the role played by P in biosphere/geosphe...

Serpentinization refers to the hydrothermal alteration of ultramafic rocks (e.g. peridotite) in which ferromagnesian silicate minerals react with water to dominantly precipitate serpentine and (hydr)oxides while producing hydrogen (H2). In natural systems, various amounts of methane (CH4) and other reduced carbon compounds are also observed in flui...

The abiotic polymerization of nucleotides and amino acids is a prerequisite for the emergence of life. It has been proposed that hydrothermal conditions might favor the polymerization of amino acids. In the present study, we analyzed by in situ Raman spectroscopy in a diamond anvil cell the fate of the simplest and most abundant amino acid, glycine...

Redox states of the Archean Eon have been constrained by various lines of evidence, including atmospheric, photochemical, and ecological models, mass-independent fractionations of sulfur isotopes, Fe-depletion of paleosols, and preservation of diagnostic detrital minerals. Although these lines of evidence present seemingly consistent upper limits o...

Chromium is mobile in ultramafic magmas but its mobility in high temperature fluids has long been unclear. Studies of some chromium-rich ophiolites have suggested chromium mobility in upper mantle fluids. However, the mechanism is poorly understood because Cr(III) is so insoluble in water. We used previous estimates of aqueous Cr species and publis...

Adsorption of prebiotic building blocks is proposed to have played a role in the emergence of life on Earth. The experimental and theoretical study of this phenomenon should be guided by our knowledge of the geochemistry of the habitable early Earth environments, which could have spanned a large range of settings. Adsorption being an interfacial ph...

Chemical evolution of early life requires concentration of monomers to polymerize from the diluted primordial ocean. Transition metals such as Fe, Mn, and Zn, could have reached considerable levels in the early seawater and hydrothermal fluids, but their influences on adsorption of biomolecules have not been clearly addressed yet. In this study, we...

Icy environments may have been common on early Earth due to the faint young sun. Previous studies have proposed that the formation of large icy bodies in the early ocean could concentrate the building blocks of life in eutectic fluids and, therefore, facilitate the polymerization of monomers. This hypothesis is based on the untested assumption that...

The geosphere and biosphere coevolved and influenced Earth's biological and mineralogical diversity. Changing redox conditions influenced the availability of different transition metals, which are essential components in the active sites of oxidoreductases, proteins that catalyze electron transfer reactions across the tree of life. Despite its rela...

In our standard late Archean weathering model (pCO2,g = bars, pH2,g = bars), crustal apatite was totally dissolved by the acidic rainwater during weathering. Our model quantitatively links the pCO2,g of the atmosphere to phosphate levels transported by rivers. The development of late Archean river water (pH = 6.4) resulted in riverine phosphate of...

Hydrothermal systems may have been favorable environments for the evolution of prebiotic chemistry on early Earth due to the presence of chemical, temperature, and redox gradients that could promote the formation of biomolecules. However, the relevance of these environments in origins of life scenarios has been debated due to rapid decomposition of...

Interpretations of the geologic record of late Archean near-surface environments depend very strongly on an understanding of weathering and resultant riverine transport to the oceans. The late Archean atmosphere is widely recognized to be anoxic (pO2,g = 10-5 to 10-13 bars; pH2,g = 10-3 to 10-5 bars). Detrital siderite (FeCO3), pyrite (FeS2), and u...

Earth's living and non-living components have co-evolved for 4 billion years through numerous positive and negative feedbacks. Earth and life scientists have amassed vast amounts of data in diverse fields related to planetary evolution through deep time-mineralogy and petrology, paleobiology and paleontology, paleotectonics and paleomagnetism, geoc...