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Published April 2016 | public
Journal Article

How did life survive Earth's great oxygenation?

Abstract

Life on Earth originated and evolved in anoxic environments. Around 2.4 billion-years-ago, ancestors of Cyanobacteria invented oxygenic photosynthesis, producing substantial amounts of O_2 as a byproduct of phototrophic water oxidation. The sudden appearance of O_2 would have led to significant oxidative stress due to incompatibilities with core cellular biochemical processes. Here we examine this problem through the lens of Cyanobacteria — the first taxa to observe significant fluxes of intracellular dioxygen. These early oxygenic organisms likely adapted to the oxidative stress by co-opting preexisting systems (exaptation) with fortuitous antioxidant properties. Over time more advanced antioxidant systems evolved, allowing Cyanobacteria to adapt to an aerobic lifestyle and become the most important environmental engineers in Earth history.

Additional Information

© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. We thank Usha Lingappa, Hope Johnson, Jena Johnson, Dianne Newman, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful feedback on ideas synthesized in this paper. We acknowledge support from a David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowship in Science and Engineering (WWF), and the Agouron Institute (JH and WWF). The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional details

Created:
August 20, 2023
Modified:
October 18, 2023