MICRO-C-OMICS #5: Oxygen Anyone ?
- G. Gulez
- Dec 4, 2018
- 1 min read
Once upon a time, 2.35 billion years ago to give you sense of it, group of microorganisms called cyanobacteria (you may know them as blue-green algae) did something amazing. So amazing that we owe them our existence on Earth: The Great Oxidation Event, in other words rapid oxygenation of the Earth.
How did cyanobacteria did this?
Cyanobacteria are photosynthetic organisms: they transform carbondioxide into sugar and oxygen in the presence of light. Although cyanobacteria were performing photosynthesis even before 2.35 billion years ago, the GOE was attributed to cyanobacterias ability of forming multicellular mats on surfaces ( aka biofilm).
It is thought that cyanobacteria form these mats to prevent themselves from excessive sun light as well as from the oxygen which they produce themselves. While within the biofilm they were protected from environmental stress, they could also have more chance to interact with each other and other microorganisms, exchange genes and diversify their functional capabilities so that they could adapt new environments, thus increasing their survival rate.
Higher survival rate together with high cell density in the mats resulted in a sustained higher metabolic activity. And higher metabolic activity means more oxygen. The oxygen, which catalyzed the evolution of life as we know it now. Simply beautiful.
