Oxygen research; one type cyanobacteria source (Introduction)

by David Turell , Sunday, April 02, 2017, 23:04 (2582 days ago) @ David Turell

Out of 41 apecies of cyanobacteria only one makes oxygen starting 2.3 billion years ago.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170330153934.htm

"Researchers reveal the family tree of the group of microorganisms responsible for 'inventing' the oxygen-producing photosynthesis that lets you breathe. They added the genomes of 41 uncultured microorganisms, which helped to pin down the precise point in the evolution of cyanobacteria at which oxygenic photosynthesis arose.

"The ability to generate oxygen through photosynthesis -- that helpful service performed by plants and algae, making life possible for humans and animals on Earth -- evolved just once, roughly 2.3 billion years ago, in certain types of cyanobacteria. This planet-changing biological invention has never been duplicated, as far as anyone can tell. Instead, according to endosymbiotic theory, all the "green" oxygen-producing organisms (plants and algae) simply subsumed cyanobacteria as organelles in their cells at some point during their evolution.

"'Oxygenic photosynthesis was an evolutionary singularity," says Woodward Fischer, professor of geobiology at Caltech, referring to the process by which certain organisms use the energy of sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into sugar for food, with oxygen as a by-product. "Cyanobacteria invented it, and then ultimately become the chloroplasts of algae. Plants are just a group of algae that moved on land."

***

"The 41 species are all types of cyanobacteria but none carry genes for photosynthesis, and therefore they don't produce organic matter, like algae and plants do. Rather, they consume it.

"Fischer and his colleagues found that a single branch of cyanobacteria -- dubbed Oxyphobacteria -- were likely the first and only group to evolve oxygenic photosynthesis.Their closest relatives, Melainabacteria, live in the guts of animals (including humans) among other environments, and do not produce oxygen. And while one might suggest that Melainabacteria simply lost the ability to produce oxygen over time, the next most closely related cyanobacteria after those, described in the paper as Sericytochromatia, also do not engage in oxygenic photosynthesis.

"'This nails down that Oxyphobacteria were really the only ones to ever invent this globe-shaping chemical process," Fischer says.

***

" Cyanobacteria are planetary-scale engineers, capable of splitting water. They invented the most challenging chemistry on the face of the planet. We would love to be able to do their water-splitting chemistry as effortlessly as they do to make fuels, and these guys figured out how to do it two and a half billion years ago," Fischer says."

Comment: One might assume that this mutation, as a one-of, was a direct intervention by God to create the oxygen-rich atmosphere we have today.