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Molybdenum in Biology - An Essential Trace Element

Essential role of molybdenum

Molybdenum is an essential trace element for several enzymes important to animal and plant metabolism: mammalian xanthine oxidase/xanthine dehydrogenase, aldehyde oxidase, sulfite oxidase, formate dehydrogenase, nitrate reductase and nitrogenase. Molybdenum functions as an electron carrier in those enzymes that catalyse the reduction of nitrogen and nitrate. Molybdenum is essential to plants being necessary for plant production, even though present in plant tissue at a level much lower (0.5 ppm dry matter basis) than the critical levels for other essential elements.

Molybdenum is essential to humans. Molybdenum is needed for at least three enzymes. Sulfite oxidase catalyses the oxidation of sulfite to sulfate, necessary for metabolism of sulfur amino acids. Sulfite oxidase deficiency or absence leads to neurological symptoms and early death. Xanthine oxidase catalyses oxidative hydroxylation of purines and pyridines including conversion of hypoxanthine to xanthine and xanthine to uric acid. Aldehyde oxidase oxidises purines, pyrimidines, pteridines and is involved in nicotinic acid metabolism. Low dietary molybdenum leads to low urinary and serum uric acid concentrations and excessive xanthine excretion.

Turnlund, J.R., Keyes, W.R., Peiffer, G.L., Chiang, G., Molybdenum Absorption, Excretion, And Retention Studied With Stable Isotopes In Young Men During Depletion And Repletion, American Journal Of Clinical Nutrition , 1995, 61 ,1102-1109.
The metabolic function of molybdenum (and other elements) has been reviewed.
Spears, J.W., Reevaluation of the metabolic essentiality of the minerals -Asian-Australasian Journal Of Animal Sciences , 1999, 12 ,1002-1008.

Molybdenum and the origin of life - molybdenum in pre-biotic chemistry

See also nitrogenase.

Stepwise oxygenation of the Proterozoic ocean-molybdate as a marker

Oxygenation of the Earth's atmosphere is thought to have proceeded in two broad steps near the beginning of the Proterozoic eon (2,500 million years ago) and its end (542 million years ago). The oxidation state of the Proterozoic ocean between its beginning and its end and the timing of deep-ocean oxygenation have important implications for the evolutionary course of life on Earth. A new perspective on ocean oxygenation based on the authigenic accumulation of molybdenum in sulfidic black shales is presented.

By 2,650 Myr ago accumulation of authigenic molybdenum from sea water is already seen in shales. The small magnitudes of these enrichments reflect weak or transient sources of dissolved molybdenum before about 2,200 Myr ago, consistent with minimal oxidative weathering of the continents.

At roughly 2,150 Myr ago, more than 200 million years after the initial rise in atmospheric oxygen, in deposited shales enrichments appear which are indicative of persistent and vigorous oxidative weathering.

After about 1,800 Myr ago expansion of sulfidic conditions maintained a mid- Proterozoic molybdenum reservoir at below 20 per cent of the modern concentration, which in turn may have acted as a nutrient feedback limiting the spatiotemporal distribution of euxinic ( sulfidic) bottom waters and perhaps the evolutionary and ecological expansion of eukaryotic organisms(10).

By 551 Myr ago, molybdenum contents reflect a greatly expanded oceanic reservoir due to oxygenation of the deep ocean and corresponding decrease in sulfidic conditions in the sediments and water column.

Scott, C., Lyons, T. W., Bekker, A., Shen, Y., Poulton, S. W., Chu, X., and Anbar, A. D., Tracing the, Nature, 2008, 452, 456-4U5.

See also

Pearce, C. R., Cohen, A. S., Coe, A. L., and Burton, K. W., Molybdenum isotope evidence for global ocean anoxia coupled with perturbations to the carbon cycle during the early Jurassic, Geology, 2008, 36, 231-234.

Molybdenum in pre-biotic chemistry-the nitrogen cycle

The nitrogen cycle provides essential nutrients to the biosphere, but its antiquity in modern form is unclear. In a drill core though homogeneous organic- rich shale in the 2.5- billion- year- old Mount McRae Shale, Australia, nitrogen isotope values vary from +1.0 to +7.5 per mil (parts per thousand) and back to +2.5 parts per thousand over similar to 30 meters. These changes evidently record a transient departure from a largely anaerobic to an aerobic nitrogen cycle complete with nitrification and denitrification. Complementary molybdenum abundance and sulfur isotopic values suggest that nitrification occurred in response to a small increase in surface- ocean oxygenation. These data imply that nitrifying and denitrifying microbes had already evolved by the late Archean and were present before oxygen first began to accumulate in the atmosphere

Garvin, J., Buick, R., Anbar, A. D., Arnold, G. L., and Kaufman, A. J., Isotopic Evidence for an Aerobic Nitrogen Cycle in the Latest Archean, Science, 2009, 323, 1045-1048.
Rehder, D., Is vanadium a more versatile target in the activity of primordial life forms than hitherto anticipated?, Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry, 2008, 6, 957-964.

Molybdenum and the origin of life

An evolutionary tree of key enzymes from the Complex-Iron-Sulfur-Molybdoenzyme (CISM) superfamily distinguishes "ancient" members, i.e. enzymes in the last universal common ancestor (LUCA) of prokaryotes, from more recently evolved subfamilies. The molybdo-enzyme superfamily existed in LUCA. The results are discussed with respect to the nature of bioenergetic substrates available to early life and to problems arising from the low solubility of molybdenum under conditions of the primordial Earth.

Schoepp-Cothenet, B., van Lis, R., Philippot, P.,Magalon, A., Russell, M.J., Nitschke, W., Scientific Reports, 2012, 2, 263. The ineluctable requirement for the trans-iron elements molybdenum and/or tungsten in the origin of life