Oxygen research; one type cyanobacteria source (Introduction)

by David Turell , Tuesday, April 04, 2017, 13:37 (2581 days ago) @ dhw

dhw: Alternatively one might assume, as Fischer does, that these guys figured out how to do it.

DAVID: The chemistry with quantum effects is very complex. not by chance!

dhw: If these guys figured it out for themselves, to quote Fischer, it was not by chance. Maybe your God gave them the intelligence to figure it out. You keep forgetting that some scientists disagree with your firm belief that bacteria have either been preprogrammed by your God or given direct instructions whenever they make a new discovery.

"Another article quoting Fischer makes the point that Fischer has no idea where the oxygen-making genes came from. He wonders about horizontal gene transfer, but from whom? 'Whom' doesn't exist!

https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/bacteria-s-evolution-sheds-light-on-great-oxygenatio...

"Interestingly these sister taxa seem not to have been able to carry out photosynthesis of any kind, indicating that these taxa split from the known cyanobacteria before the latter evolved the ability to photosynthesise.

"This leads the researchers to conclude the ancestors of modern cyanobacteria gained this capacity by “lateral gene transfer” – the transfer of genetic material between extant organisms, in contrast to vertical gene transfer, which is the process of parents conferring genetic material to offspring.

"Genes for parts of the photosynthetic process must have come from some other microbe, the authors argue, and then these evolved further within the ancestors of Oxyphotobacteria. Remarkably, this indicates that oxygenic photosynthesis evolved in only one branch of the cyanobacterial family.

"This is the first time anyone has been able to establish how the oxyphotobacteria might have evolved. As Fischer says: “It’s a big deal that we can now say with some certainty that lateral transfer was important.”

"It is also a big deal that it is these bacteria responsible for the Great Oxidation Event.

"This explosion in abundance of molecular oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere had profound consequences. The first was the extinction via oxygen-toxicity of many types of anaerobic bacteria. The second was the production of the environment conducive to the evolution of the most recent and familiar of the three domains of life, the eukaryotes, to which all plants, animals and fungi belong.

"Fischer suggests that while it might be tempting to think the genes for oxygenic photosynthesis came, via lateral transfer, from one of the six phyla of extant bacteria capable of non-oxygen producing photosynthesis, “it seems just as possible that whoever gave Cyanobacteria the genes for photosynthesis went extinct long ago'”.

Comment: Darwin theory brings the only solution, "lateral gene transfer". Not allowed to think of God's saltation as a possibility. Note Fischer does not specifically say the bacteria thought it up all by themselves. Figuring out how to do it, in Fischer's words now become LGT, talking out of both sides of his mouth to stick with Darwin.